


carter grant, super sleuth

by unicyclehippo



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, carter needs an interview with supergirl, kara obliges
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-05-20 01:24:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 101,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5987425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicyclehippo/pseuds/unicyclehippo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carter Grant needs interviews with the three women he admires the most. His mother isn't surprised to see her own name on the list, or Supergirls, but Kara Danvers? That one is a surprise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Which is why I would like to have an interview with Supergirl. Unsupervised.”

Carter finishes his speech with a sharp nod of his head and Cat suppresses the flutter of pride at seeing him standing there in front of her, resolute and strong. True, she is his mother and he isn’t shy around her. Also true, he makes excellent points and he has a strong, clear voice and a wealth of determination.

However. 

Not everyone in this world is Cat Grant. 

Not everyone is as sharp and clever and witty and wise and understanding and compassionate as she is. And, she admits to herself, what may be more important is that not everyone is Carter’s mother.

So she fixes him with a calculating look and waits for a moment and then a moment longer, turning his proposal over in her mind. Cat Grant is many things and a pushover isn’t one of them. There is a way to turn this in her favour—there are many ways to turn this in her favour, but she isn’t about to steal _all_ of Carter’s glory and excitement, she just wants to make it clear to him that if he is making this a business transaction then there is a price to pay and a game to play. 

Besides, she has a reputation to keep and no one, not even her son, is going to swindle her out of the relationship she’s fostered between CatCo and her hero. 

“And what would I get in return?” she asks him finally and Carter looks up from where he’s fixed his eyes on edge of her table and meets her look quickly, obviously surprised. 

“You? In return?” he falters.

“Of course. You don’t think that I would give up my _exclusive_ rights to National City’s hero— _Catco_ ’s hero—for,” she waves her hand at him, down to his school bag, to emphasis her point, “just any old school project, do you?”

Carter frowns heavily for a moment, thinking through. Then, he says slowly, “First of all, you can be assured of the utmost privacy. As you have said, it’s a school project and if the work of a minor were to be published against their will that would open the school up to a serious lawsuit, which I’m sure you would be happy to head to protect your hero and your son.” Cat’s lips quirk up the tiniest amount in a smile—he really is her son. She gives him an encouraging nod when he glances up again and he sets his shoulders, swallows hard, and presses on. “Second, it’s not just any old school project, Mom. It’s worth forty per cent of my final grade for the class.”

“Forty per cent? When did you get this project?” she asks, eyes narrowing. If this is his way of rushing it at the last minute…

“Today, mom. I want to get a head start on it.” He breaks into a smile when her glare doesn't lessen up at all. “You’re right mom, I’m lying, I got it a month ago and I’m abusing my relationship with the best reporter in America so that I won’t fail.”

“Carter,”

“ _Mom_. I’m kidding.”

“Oh Carter. Carter, that was a joke.” It always surprises her. Delights her. 

“I think it’s called sarcasm, yeah.” He brings her back to the topic at hand, switching back to their old conversation. “The earlier I start, the more likely I’ll have time for a follow up interview if I need it.”

Cat leans back in her chair, touches a hand to her chin thoughtfully. “That’s true. Were those your only points?”

Carter gives her the tiniest smile and his eyes flash with triumph. Triumph. Well, that was a new look on him. She lifts her eyebrows. 

“If Supergirl agrees, I’m willing to let you have access to the transcript of our interview.”

“And all subsequent interviews?”

Carter purses his lips but nods. “Alright.”

Cat hesitates—it is, admittedly, a very good offer. Carter has all the smarts and charm to get her to let her guard down and Cat has no doubt that he’ll dig up something interesting when she does—and that hesitation is all Carter needs. 

He whips a folder out of his bag and rushes around to her side of the desk, placing it in front of her. 

“Here,” he says. “Our contract.”

“A contract?” She’s played right into his hands, she realises with a sudden sharp pride. “I’ll have to have my general counsel have a look at this,” she sniffs, but she gives it a quick once over and moves her glass of mnm’s so they’re within his reach too. She takes a photo of the single page and sends it to Lane. Lane’s answer comes back two minutes later, confirming what Cat thought. It’s a good deal. 

When she signs the paper—it really is very simple. She’ll provide him access to her girl and he will give her access to whatever information he digs up, so long as she’ll attest to the fact that the work was all his if his teacher should ask—his eyes light up. 

“What else did you bring? May I?” 

She gestures to the rest of the pages in the folder and he nods. A copy of the project plan and criteria, some initial questions. The assignment looks straight forward enough—interview people whom you admire, write a piece on them, blah blah blah, it was more or less the same nonsense she had to do when she was in his grade. A permission slip for the field trip to the zoo next week he had forgotten to give her—she signs that one immediately—and she picks out a few other projects Carter’s been working on and he tells her they’re all under control and flops into the chair opposite. 

“So?”

“Hmm?”

“When can I see her?”

“See whom?” Carter rolls his eyes and she points a pen in his direction. “Roll them like that again, Carter, and they’ll roll right out of your head.”

“I think his super orbital ridges are a little too developed to let that happen, Miss Grant,” Kara says as she swans her way into Cat’s office without so much as a knock. “Hi, Carter.”

“Kara!” Carter is out of his chair and by her side in the blink of an eye. “Did you hear? I’m going to see Supergirl again!”

“I did,” Kara says, wrapping an arm around his shoulders with a fond smile. She coughs a tad and hurries on. “Not. I did _not_ hear that, couldn’t possibly have heard that Carter, you’ve only told your mom so far. I couldn’t have overhead—” She stops herself, clears her throat. Reaches up to adjust her glasses. “That’s very exciting,” she says, and reaches down to squeeze his shoulder, giving him a bright smile. 

Carter’s very slight frown disappears. “It’s going to be _amazing_. I’m going to interview her for my writing project.”

“Well, you’re very talented, I’m sure you’ll write a great essay,” Kara says, and it’s a little more demure than she wants it to be because she’s caught her boss’s look—that very clearly reminds her of exactly what her position is—and she takes her hand off Carter’s shoulder and steps away. She fixes her eyes on the tablet in her hands and closes the distance to the desk. “The layouts you asked for, Miss Grant.”

“Finally.”

“Would you like me to ask James Olsen to get in touch with Supergirl?”

“Yes. Have him set the interview for tomorrow evening, after school lets out. Carter finishes chess—”

“At four thirty,” Kara finishes for her, and though her face whitens when she registers that she interrupted Cat—when the woman has been _so clear_ about what they are now to each other—she doesn’t apologise. She just types on the tablet for a moment. “I’ll let Mr Olsen know right away. Is there anything else?”

Cat doesn’t bother to speak, just waves her hand, and Kara leaves.

//

Carter has to leave at five. He has homework to do, Cat reminds him, and she has a tragic mess of a sports section to edit before the weekend—and Kara— _Kiera_ —messages her when Carter gets into the town car she called for him, and then again when the driver tells her that Carter arrived home safely. Cat gets a message from Carter a few minutes later to confirm and only then does she actually settle to get work done. 

She doesn’t notice when a glass of water is placed by her side, or two aspirin in a small clear dish, and she doesn’t really notice when the edited layouts are taken down to the art department. It all happens so quickly and quietly and when enough of the work is done that Cat can justify going home, she leans back in her chair to check the time—8:22—and sighs. 

Kiera is still out there, pouring over some document or another. 

Cat switches over to message on her computer, but doesn’t send anything. She taps a long finger against the glass. She should let it be. She should let it go. 

But she’s irritated that the girl just. won’t. leave. 

_I don’t pay you overtime, Karla_

Kara looks up, jerking slightly, when the message pings onto her screen and Cat ignores the way her assistant’s face falls after reading it. 

_There were some issues with Bodley’s column, Miss Grant._

_Issues?_

_Minor errors. I’m almost done proof reading it_.

Cat sighs and rubs at her forehead. Ka—Kiera is at her desk when she opens her eyes and she holds out a single aspirin.

“Wonderful, Karla, just what I need. An ineffectual dose in the hands of an ineffectual assistant.”

Kara ignores the comment and Cat narrows her eyes. “You had two an hour ago, Miss Grant. Even one extra is pushing the recommended dosage.”

“They’re exceedingly mild and hardly worth paying for. Oh my, just like you.” She layers her voice with as much derision as she can muster and again, Kara doesn’t so much as blink. Her hand is steady holding the dish and she just _looks_ at Cat until the woman snatches it out of her hand. “Water.” Her glass is pressed into her hand in the next second. “Thank you,” she says before she can stop the words. She blames it on the late hour and the thumping behind her eyes. “For your mediocrity,” she tacks on.

“I’m sorry, Miss Grant?”

“I don’t see that I should be paying overtime for you to slack. If you cannot complete your work within the hours you are set, well. Perhaps you aren’t the right fit for Catco.” It’s the closest she’s come to threatening Kara’s job yet and Kara hears it. Loud and clear. “The editing,” she says when Kara frowns, and Kara’s eyes clear when she understands what Cat means. 

She waits a moment, taking the glass from Cat before she answers her. When she does speak, her voice is steady and quiet and utterly unaffected. “Mr Bodley’s column is complete. I’ve sent the revised column to your email along with Mr Olsen’s selections for the images. If there’s nothing else, Miss Grant, I’ll leave for tonight.”

//

Cat reads through the column—the submitted column and then Kara's revision. It's excellent. Kara's, that is. The original is sloppy and has several mistakes that Kara noted for her and she sets a reminder for Kara to find out the following morning exactly what it would cost for his severance. 


	2. Chapter 2

“Mr Olsen.”

If she were another person, someone might say that Cat was pacing. But she wasn’t someone else. She was Cat Grant and those with a tendency for _puns_ —horrible things, in her opinion—might say that she doesn’t pace. She prowls. Though the cat puns irk her, she can’t deny that she likes it when her prey squirms and that’s exactly what’s so irritating about Mr Olsen. He refuses to squirm. Well. She can still try.

“What part of ‘get an interview with Supergirl this afternoon’ was so difficult to grasp?”

“Miss Grant, with all due resect, I have no control over Supergirl.”

“Clearly.”

“I let her know what you were after. She said she would think about it.”

“Think about it,” she repeats. Slowly. “Now, that’s interesting.”

“Miss Grant?”

“I find it _interesting_ ,” she continues like he had never spoken, “how little you care for your job. And how little she seems to care about protecting your job. You can let her know that the same rules apply from our first…interview.” She holds a grudge still. She’d been _kidnapped_ , which was the height of rudeness. “If she doesn’t arrive, The Planet can have their photo journalist back.”

He presses his lips together tight in a meagre smile. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Carter will be here in twenty minutes, Mr Olsen. You do not want to be the one to make me tell him that Supergirl won’t be here. Do you?"

“No, Miss Grant.”

“Hmm.” She lifts her hands, flicks her fingers just _barely_ , and he’s gone.

And then he stops. Of course. Just outside her office, at her assistant’s desk.

Cat wonders just what about the situation she hates the most—that her abominably cheery, ill-dressed assistant is distracting her photo journalist from doing his job, that said assistant has some connection to Supergirl beyond their similar cheekbones and hair colour (some friendship perhaps?), or the way she leans in towards Olsen with that smile directed at him and only him, happy and hopeful and reassuring all at once, eyes crinkling at the corners under the sheer force of it.

It’s the fact that she has a connection to Supergirl, an unknown connection, that bothers her. Cat hates the unknown.

Supergirl knew her name, Cat remembers.

What could be so special about Kiera—an assistant, a young woman, admittedly _pretty_ but how awfully cliche if blonde hair and batting eyelashes and a coy flush of the cheeks were all it took to intrigue a hero—that Supergirl calls her by her first name? Smiles at her? Shakes her hand—is _nice_ to her?

Cat takes a seat at her desk and glares thoughtfully at Kara until the clock strikes a quarter to five and then she begins to plan how to let Mr Olsen go. Carter is on his way up to her office and Supergirl is nowhere to be seen. He’s failed her and Cat has no room for failure in her office. Carter will be disappointed. And Kara is still sitting there unflinchingly like she can’t feel Cat’s eyes burning into the side of her face.

“Hey Carter,” she hears Kara say. “How was school?”

“Good.” He’s holding tight to his backpack and won’t look at Kara. Cat suspects that has more to do with hoping Supergirl is around than not liking Kara.

“That’s good.” Kara holds out a plate to him—when had she picked that up?—and he takes it with a smile.

“Thanks, Kara.”

“No trouble. I thought you might not have time to get a snack if you came straight from chess. Did you win?”

“Twice,” he says and Kara _beams_.

“Kiera! The files I asked for?”

Kara grabs a sheaf of papers and gives Carter a small smile, walking in with him. “Miss Grant,” she says, laying the papers on her desk. “I’ve finished the work you asked for, was there anything else you needed?”

“No.”

Kara nods. “Carter, can I get you anything?”

The boy shakes his head. He had moved to go stand by the wall of windows, eyes fixed on the sky. “No thanks, Kara.”

“Okay. I hope you get your interview.”

“I don’t think she’s coming,” he says with a shrug.

“Don’t think like that, Carter. You said she spoke to you on the train, right?” Kara crosses over the room to him and, though Cat watches her like a hawk, she doesn’t stop her. Because Carter turns away from the windows to look at her—right in the eyes and that’s rare enough that Cat doesn’t have the heart to put a stop to it. He nods. “She’s probably fighting some alien or, or holding a building on her shoulders or helping her cousin with something,” she tells him, and reaches up to adjust her glasses. Gives him a fond smile. “I think you should give her a little time. I think she likes you, Carter, I’m sure she’ll come and talk to you when she can.”

“You think so?”

“Who wouldn’t?” Kara asks, so genuinely Cat smiles down at her computer for a moment. The girl may have broken one son’s heart but she looks after the other so carefully Cat doesn’t know what to think for a moment. “Maybe think some more about the questions you want to ask her and then, when she gets here, you’ll know exactly what you want to ask.”

He brightens and wraps his arms around her waist in a tight hug.

Cat has to watch, she must, because her son is not the most affectionate of people and to see him initiate a hug is always a surprise. And a joy. No matter if it _is_ with a sneaky, heart-breaking, unfashionable, too-cheerful assistant.

Which is why she sees the small hesitation before Kara settles her hands very carefully on Carter’s back and presses her fingers lightly against him in the barest of hugs. And the flash of emotion—too quick to read, but deep and intense—that crosses her face when she looks down at him.

“Thanks, Kara.”

“Of course!” Kara says, as cheery as ever. She adjusts her glasses one more time and looks out the window, searches the city sky line. “Good night,” she says, mostly to Carter, but she flicks her eyes over to Cat at the last second and, in a moment of weakness, Cat nods very slightly.

//

Carter sits on the floor to work on his homework. Cat’s comments of “Carter, there’s a perfectly good couch right behind you” go ignored, always have, so she leaves him to it. She knows that he would be more comfortable at home—she bought him a large beanbag that he curls into to read and write and play his video games and she knows it’s his favourite place—so the fact that he’s here speaks volumes.

He doesn’t want to leave. Just in case.

It’s bad luck—or purposeful timing—that he’s gone down to the security booth to get some information on the break in with Leslie Willis when she arrives.

There is a sound. Barely a sound, if she’s honest. Something lands, very softly, on the balcony to her office. But more than that is the feeling of someone watching, her instincts prickling, and Cat looks up and out the window.

She’s standing there, the super 'S' emblazoned on her chest. Confident as always and apparently uncaring that she’s an hour late.

Cat makes her way over to the door. Stares through it at the woman for a long moment.

Supergirl could break the door. She could break open the lock, tear it from the door. Knock the bulletproof glass with a tap of her finger. But she doesn’t.

It unnerves Cat. All that power, and she’s held back by something. And no one knows what it is.

She opens the door for the hero but doesn’t move, so Supergirl has to step in past her and if Cat didn’t know any better, the hero was holding her breath as she edges past without touching her.

Then, in a burst of speed, the other woman is in the centre of the room and arms folded over her chest. She nods. “Miss Grant.”

“Supergirl.” Cat greets her with a smile. Then a frown. “You’re late.”

“Couldn’t be helped, I’m afraid.”

“Urgent business to take care of?” She returns to her desk and looks up expectantly, shares a smile with the woman. Supergirl won’t tell her. Just smirks and tilts her head to the side. “Not even a hint?”

“Our relationship isn’t at that point I’m afraid.”

“Hmm.” She shouldn’t be so pleased, hearing those words. _Our relationship._ “I’m disappointed.”

“I apologise, Miss Grant.” Supergirl doesn’t sound sorry, though. Just reserved. A perhaps a touch amused? “That’s not why I’m here.”

“Right,” Cat drawls. “Allow me to understand. I ask you for an interview and I get put off for an entire week. _Carter_ asks for an interview and you manage to fit him into your busy schedule within a day. Ah,” she holds her hand up before Supergirl can speak. “Not that I’m complaining, of course.”

“Of course,” Supergirl agrees smoothly.

“I’m thrilled that you agreed to be a source for his assignment. You should know that I’m taking care of any privacy disputes. Nothing he writes will be re-sold, published, or shared at all so feel free to spill all your secrets.”

“And you aren’t benefiting from this arrangement at all?”

Cat narrows her eyes. “Are you accusing me of using my own son to get a story, Supergirl?”

Smooth as silk, Supergirl returns with, “I’d never accuse you of such an underhanded tactic, Miss Grant,” and before Cat can feel the sting of that, she sees Supergirl’s smile and recognises what this is. Teasing. They’re _bonding_. “You’re the epitome of integrity.”

“Yes, yes, enough flattery. We both know I would do such a thing for a good story.”

“We do.” Supergirl nods and in the face of the confirmation, confusingly, she _relaxes_. Her arms fall out of their tense pose, uncross from over her chest and fall loose at her sides. “And while I know that you have the responsibility of reporting the truth, Miss Grant, I do ask that you are careful with what you choose to publish. I have enemies and I wish to keep National City and its people safe.”

“Its people, or yours?” Supergirl just stands there. “You do have friends, don’t you? Family? Other than Olsen, I presume.”

Supergirl cocks her head to the side like she can hear something. And then, “Carter is coming.”

She can hear him. She could probably hear him anywhere in the building, Cat realises. Supergirl can hear her heart start to beat faster, just like it always does when she remembers that this woman, this young pretty woman, who looks soft and sweet and gentle, is not human and all, nor soft, nor gentle.

“Don't think I didn't see that deflection, Supergirl. But luckily for you, I have something more important things to discuss and I'll make it quick and painfully obvious so that even your brain, addled as I'm sure it is from one too many punches, can understand. There are ground rules for this interview,” Cat says, low and quick, hurrying the words out before Carter can arrive and interrupt them. Supergirl might be more god than human, but Cat is a mother. “You will not hurt him. You will not tell him any information that could reveal your identify or make him a person of interest to your enemies. You will not tell him anything graphic. Do you watch movies, Supergirl?”

“Yes, Miss Grant.”

“PG-13. Nothing more graphic than that.”

“If he asks a question that has a graphic answer?”

“You don’t tell him. Tell him it’s a matter of national security, I don’t give a damn. My son will not be put in danger. I won’t allow it.”

“I understand. I would never put him in harms way. And if harm finds him, I will do whatever is in my power to protect him from it.”

It sounds an awful lot like a vow, and though she knows it is meant to reassure her, Cat is not reassured.

“Why?” Cat asks, steps around her desk, closer to the hero. She looks at the other woman closely and she’s annoyed when Supergirl looks back, inscrutable. “You barely know him.”

“All children deserve to be safe, Miss Grant,” Supergirl tells her with all the stern voice and strong jawline of a hero. That sadness in her tone, however, is as human as Cat has ever heard.

“You have a weakness for children,” Cat says. Realises. That’s a weakness that can hurt so many people. Ruin so many lives.

“I don’t consider it a weakness.”

“It is." Supergirl doesn't react, not that Cat can see, but something shifts between them. Gets a little colder, a little darker. Then Supergirl takes a deliberate step back, turns away a little, and that's as telling as any reply. "I’m not saying it’s a bad thing,” Cat says, purposefully light. The mood had become too heavy and at any rate she’s reassured, as much as possible, that Supergirl won’t hurt Carter. “I am saying that if he gets so much as a paper cut…” She lifts her eyebrows and, to her surprise, Supergirl breaks into a wide smile.

“I’ll take good care of him, Miss Grant.”

“ _Supergirl,"_ a young, terribly excited voice breathes out. They turn toward the open doors, where Carter is now standing, and he rushes in to stand next to his mother. “You’re here for the interview?”

“I am. I’m sorry for being late, Mister Grant. It was unavoidable.”

“I understand.” He nods back, so serious. “Thank you for coming.”

“Of course. Consider it a thank you for your assistance on the train.”

His eyes light up at that—a _thank you_. From _Supergirl—_ and then he looks sidelong at his mother. “Mom,” he hisses.

“Oh. Oh yes.” She picks up her computer from her desk, disconnects the charger, and makes her way to the door. “If you need anything, Carter,”

“I’ll text you,” he says and he even spares her a smile before his eyes return and lock on to his hero.

“Alright. I’ll be right out here.”

At Kara’s desk, she supposes. It is closest to her office if something goes wrong.

She looks down at the desk and huffs, moving Kara's things carelessly to the side. Not that she would purposefully break anything but if something _were_ to break, well. It’s not like she’s breaking someone’s heart. And it's all so kitsch really if a few things were to go missing or spontaneously break, she'd be doing Kara a favour.

She didn’t think they would've noticed, Carter and Supergirl, they’re busy talking. But then a mug is falling and a hand catches it before it can shatter against the floor. And Supergirl is giving her a reproving look.

“What?”

“No need to break your assistants personal items, Miss Grant.” 

“Yes, well—“ but there is no excuse and no time for an excuse because as quickly as Supergirl was there, she was gone again, back into her office.

Cat watches as Carter gestures to the couch. Supergirl sits and he takes the opposite couch. Sets out his papers neatly. It takes him a moment to get all the edges lined up as he wants them and Supergirl doesn’t shift an inch, just waits and watches. They talk for a while and then he hands over the first sheet and a pen and, when she signs, he takes the page back with slightly shaking hands. He pulls out the recording device Cat gave him and sets it between them on the table and, when Supergirl nods, he clicks it on.


	3. Chapter 3

With Supergirl sitting right in front of him, Carter isn’t sure exactly where to start and he panics internally. What if she has to leave? What if she thinks he’s too nosy? What if she doesn’t like him—he knows that the other kids in his class thinks he’s weird and a _nerd_ and though his mum says it’s alright to be a nerd and he trusts her, sometimes he wonders if it’s _actually_ okay, and Supergirl can punch a guy through a brick wall so maybe she doesn’t care so much about mental prowess as physically prowess, though she is also kind and good and—

“Carter?” Supergirl leans forward, an oddly familiar and comforting smile on her face. “I have a lot of powers, but I don’t know CPR.”

“What?”

“ _Breathe_ ,” she laughs. 

“Oh.” He sucks in a deep breath and his lungs ache a little with a reminder that he should do that on a more frequent basis, like he’s supposed to. 

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I just never thought you’d actually agree to this. I guess it’s kind of stupid, huh? Writing essays and all of that. To someone like you, I mean.”

“Not at all. I quite liked school.” She lifts a hand, pauses for a moment at her face before continuing to brush her hair back. “It was hard, but it was interesting. I’ve always loved to learn.”

“Me too. My favourite is Science. And I like writing, but not like mum likes it.”

Supergirl nods and she doesn’t _really_ smile, but Carter thinks he can make out a touch of fondness in the way her eyes run over everything in his mother’s office. “She is very talented,” is all she says, and then she’s focusing those eyes back on Carter. “I’ve known a lot of scientists. Many of them are incredibly warm, bright people who are doing wonderful things for the world. I think you will fit in very well, Carter.” His face lights up like a minor star and she nods gently down to his notebook. “You have some questions for me?”

“Yeah, but first we should go over some stuff. I had a contract drawn up,” he says, plucking it from the table in front of him with a small frown and Kara—because she is Kara then, just for a moment she _lets_ herself be Kara—feels a wave of fondness wash over at seeing just how alike to Cat he is. 

Which is, like, _super_ confusing because she’s supposed to be staying away from Cat, she’s supposed to be distancing herself, Cat _told_ her to…

But then Cat Grant asks for Supergirl and she smiles at Supergirl and invites Supergirl to spend time with her son, _asks_ her to spend time with Carter, and it’s, Rao, it’s so confusing and unsettling because Kara knows. Kara knows that if Cat Grant knew who she was, she wouldn’t be here. The deception makes Kara feel slimy and faintly ill, like the way her insides twist when she’s around Kryptonite, without any loss of power perhaps but just as sick. 

Kara doesn’t realise that she’s floating until Carter does—he gasps and she looks from him to where his eyes are, looking wide-eyed at the gap where she’s floating a good few inches above the couch—and then she lets herself drop back down to the couch with a slight _thump_ and gives him a sheepish smile.

“Sorry. I was thinking about something.”

“That’s alright.” He gulps a bit but then hands the page over. “It’s actually really cool.”

“Thanks!” She speed reads the document—a handy skill—and Cat had already told her that whatever Carter wrote would be confidential so she has no hesitation in signing it. She wonders what the legitimacy of it would be, signing with an X in place of her name, and then she realises that Carter would be _thrilled_ if she were to sign her name in Kryptonian, so she does. 

She actually thinks he faints for two seconds when he sees it but he actually just breathes out and nods and slips it into his folder. “Do you mind if I record this?” he asks, setting a device between them. 

With a touch of amusement, Supergirl replies, “I suppose not.”

She flicks her eyes over to Cat, too quick for the other woman to notice, but she sees that the other woman is pretending to work but is watching their every move, and so she tries to make herself as unthreatening as possible. She picks up a pillow and holds it in her lap, curls her shoulders in a little to make herself look smaller, smiles so that Carter knows she’s friendly, that it’s all alright. 

It doesn’t really occur to her that a good hunch is an integral part to her disguise until a moment later but Carter hasn’t noticed, still too in awe that Supergirl— _Supergirl!—_ is sitting opposite him. She forces her shoulders back and hopes that Cat hadn’t noticed. 

What had she been thinking? Coming to the belly of the beast and agreeing to an interview—with _Carter_. And Cat, hovering just around the corner, instinctive and too clever Cat. What on earth had she been thinking? She was going to get found out, she was going to get exposed, Hank was going to _kill_ her. 

“What’s your name?” Carter asks. “What does your signature mean?”

Supergirl hesitates. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that.”

“Oh. I understand.” He makes a note on his page. If she tried, she could make out what it said, but she doesn’t look. “Is there something I can call you, though? Supergirl is a bit much to say all the time.”

She thinks, for a while, about what she might be able to tell him. Supergirl touches her fingers to the coat of arms on her chest, follows the S with her fingers. “This is the emblem of my family,” she tells him, and it’s hard to think about and she’s not quiet sure why she’s telling him but she thinks, maybe, it might be nice for one other person to understand. “The House of El.”

“El,” he repeats. “Can I call you that?”

“Technically,” she says, drawing herself up with pride, and she can’t help the slight regal edge her voice takes on because she was _just_ this person, just a few days ago, and it was real, it was real to _her_ at the very least and it crushes her all over again to remember that everyone and everything she has loved so recently, completely, honestly, is gone again, but that Kara, that version of her, stays with her like a shadow, lingers, the same as the black had that one time she had tried to dye her hair to match her sister when she was young. “My title is Lady El, First of the House of El, Daughter of Krypton. But yes,” she says with a quick smile, “you can call me El.”

“ _Awesome_ ,” he breathes out. Then, reminding himself that he’s performing a serious interview, he shakes himself back into focus. “What’s it like being bulletproof?”

“Helpful, in my line of work.”

He grins but then elaborates on his question. “Does it affect other stuff, though? You can’t get cut but can you feel stuff?”

She pauses. Then, slowly, “What do you mean?”

“Can you feel pain at all?”

“Not many human things can hurt me at all,” she says, “so until I started using my—until I started helping National City, I had never felt pain.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Okay, what about the cold?”

“I don’t really notice it. My—“ Supergirl pauses again and Carter wonders what that is about, wonders what she’s trying not to tell him. “I’ve been told that I’m warm, though.” Told, by whom? he wonders. And then it occurs to him that it might not be _what_ she’s trying to hide, but who. 

“Okay. Can you feel it when you get hit by a bullet?”

It’s a question bordering on dark, she thinks, but barely, so she answers him. “Kind of?” She scrunches her nose up in thought. “I just block it out.”

“Do you block it consciously?" He presses on when she shakes her head no. "So you do it all the time. What about if someone hugged you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you block that? Can you feel it? Do you notice? Do you even _know_ if you block stuff like that?”

“Oh. Well, yeah. Yes, I can feel that. I...can't really explain,” she says. "It's classified."

“Hmm.” Carter makes a note on his page and then nods. “Okay, cool. And I know about your super strength and speed and you can fly, of course. And you’ve got heat vision and freeze breath.” She nods. “Do you have any other powers?”

She tilts her head to the side, considering. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that she’s so different, that she can do these things, that’s she’s special, because they just _are_ and she just _is._ She isn’t anything remarkable in her own mind _._ “Oh,” she remembers. “I can see through most objects. And I have really good hearing.”

“How good?”

She shrugs. “I’m not sure. If I try to listen without a goal in mind, it gets pretty loud. What do you want me to listen for?”

He turns a little devious smile on her and asks, “Can you hear if anyone is at my school still?”

“Let’s find out.” After a moment, she asks softly, “Umm, Carter? Where do you go to school?” Because that is something that Supergirl wouldn’t know, she reminds herself. 

“St. Edmund Hall.”

“Alright. St. Edmund Hall.” She closes her eyes and focuses, breathes in through her nose and tries to pinpoint those sounds. Sweeps past the bars and the chatting of dinner— _hi, table for two thanks?—Check please—Hey babe, wanna get out of here?—Shut up, Dad—Did you hear about the old man, the young man, and the baby who walked into a bar?—This was so nice, Daniel, I love you, this was perfect—Get off me, get_ off _me, someone please help! Someone help me!—_ to the mostly empty halls of the school. “There’s a janitor on the third floor,” she says. “And a teachers meeting. And your principal is there as well,” she rushes out before she stands. “I’m sorry, Carter, I’ll be right back.”

Cat looks up from her computer when she sees a blur out of the corner of her eye and then the hero is nowhere to be seen and Carter is kind of just… _gaping_ at the place she used to be. She hurries to join him, worried, but he turns to her with bright, bright eyes and a grin. 

“She’s so cool,” he says. 

Cat nods slowly, glancing around. “Are you done? That was a quick interview.”

“No. I asked her about her super hearing and I think she heard someone getting attacked. She’s coming back,” he tells his mother confidently, and Cat nods again. She’d _better_ be. “She can hear all the way to my _school_ , mom. Do you know how _far_ that is?”

“Yes, Carter.”

“It’s seven point two _kilometres_ , mom. And I bet she could hear further. But that’s, like, even with all the skyscrapers and the city is still really busy, it’s only six thirty, it must be really loud, so it’s not only seven point two kilometres, it’s also with wind and obstacles in the way and _all_ of that,” he says all in a rush, face flushing a tinge.

“Breathe, Carter.”

He does, and then he smiles at her again, and Cat lays her hands on his shoulders. She squeezes them gently. “I hope you’re getting some good information for me,” she teases, and he rolls his eyes. 

Supergirl is back then, only a few minutes after she had sped out of the office, alighting one foot then the other, and she holds her hands a little stiffly. “Miss Grant, is there somewhere I could wash my hands?” She tucks them behind her back when Carter looks but, for a hero with super speed, she doesn’t do it fast enough. 

“Is that blood?”

“Ah…” Supergirl shoots a panicked look across to Cat, who lifts an eyebrow. “No?”

“He’s thirteen, Supergirl. He knows what blood is.”

“Oh. Then yes.” Cat points to a door behind her desk and Supergirl speeds into the next room and she’s back in a split second. She dries her hands on her cape— _really_ , Cat thinks, _on your cape?_ —and Carter is back in business, firing questions at her. 

“Did someone get hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Badly?”

Supergirl grins, then, and the Grant’s both feel their hearts skip at the expression. It’s pleased and exhilarated and utterly enchanting. 

“No. I got there in time.”

“Who was it? Did you take them to the hospital? Did you stop the bad person? What was happening?”

“I don’t know their name,” she says. “But yes, I took them to the hospital. I incapacitated the attacker, he was trying to hurt a lady.”

“Cool.” Carter nods. Then, his smile slips slowly off his face and he ducks his head low, chin almost pressing against his chest, and he says, “You can go, if you want. I didn’t mean to take up all your time.”

When Supergirl steps close to him and kneels in front of him, lays a gentle hand on his shoulder with infinite care like she’s not sure exactly how much power she can use, Cat wants to whisk him away.

“I want to be here. I’m very happy to help you.”

“But there are people out there,” Carter says, pointing out the window, “who actually need help.”

Supergirl doesn’t say anything for a long moment and then she nods. “Yes. There are.”

“So you shouldn’t waste time with me, you should go and save them.”

“Carter,” Supergirl says again, and she sounds sad and very tired. “One thing I’ve learned since I started doing this,” she taps the S on her chest, “is that I cannot save everyone. I try. But I can’t.”

“But if you’re here with us you aren’t trying at all,” he argues.

“As much as I might like to think it, I’m not invincible. And I ran into a bit of trouble this week,” she admits, drawing back and standing up tall once again. “I’m supposed to be resting, if I’m honest,” she says quietly, like she’s letting them in on a big secret. 

And she might well be, Cat thinks, and her fingers itch for want of a pen. 

Supergirl notices the movement, must identify the want, because her face cements over, utterly impassive. 

“Did you have more questions for me, Carter?”

She emphasizes his name and meets Cat’s eyes and Cat doesn’t understand the why, but she does understand that it is clearly a dismissal. She offers the hero a smile and squeezes Carter’s shoulders again. 

“I’ll be—“

“Right outside,” he says. “I _know_ , mom.”

//

“What’s the hardest thing about being a superhero?” he asks her later. They’ve gone over a few topics by now—if she has any heroes of her own, who her inspirations are, what she values in other people, because he does have a topic in mind for his essay after all—but they come to this one and he thinks, maybe, she isn’t going to answer him.

She looks over at him with dark, dark eyes and then, finally, she says, “Do you remember how I said I can’t save everyone?”

He nods. 

“That’s hard.” She turns her head a little, staring off into the distance, and Carter realises that she’s probably actually looking _at_ something. Not just zoning out. Something he can’t see. Something far in the distance, beyond the buildings that stab up into the sky. “I lost someone this week.” Her voice is soft and calm and incredibly sad. “Someone that I loved.”

“I’m really sorry.”

She smiles—she’s so _sad_ , he can practically feel it rolling off her like waves, and she still smiles at him a small curl of the lips that manages to be reassuring and a thank you and he smiles back. 

“Thanks, Carter. That’s really nice of you.”

“Who was it?”

He breezes by about seven layers of tact, but Su—but _Kara_ knows that Carter doesn’t always see tact or the social conventions in the same way most kids do, that he has to learn each one as he comes up to them, and even then he sometimes sweeps right past them. 

“I can’t tell you that,” she says. It’s true. Partially. Supergirl can’t tell a citizen, a _child_ , that. But Kara hasn’t been able to say her aunts name all week, not since it happened, so there’s that too.

“Oh.”

He lowers his notebook and, looking from her to the recording device, he leans forward impulsively to switch it off. “I won’t write about it. But you can tell me, if you want to.”

Supergirl’s breath catches. Carter looks at her so earnestly, so ready to help her, that her heart thuds painfully in her chest and a tiny, tiny sob works its way up into her throat. She swallows it down hard and shakes her head, just once, firmly. 

“No, Carter. I can’t tell you. But thank you for offering.”

“Okay.” He doesn’t look disappointed, just sad, and he hops up off the couch and moves around to join her, sitting next to her. “We can stop, if you want?”

“No, that’s alright.” She pulls off her gloves, though, and her cape, and crosses her feet underneath her on the couch. “What’s next?”

Carter mimics her, hugging a pillow and crossing his legs but no sooner as he had, Cat taps on the glass of the office walls and says loudly to them, “No shoes on the couch, Carter,” seemingly without even looking up from her computer and the two of them share the wide-eyed look of shared nerves that comes with being told off by Cat Grant. Supergirl drops him a slow wink and lifts herself off the couch, hovering a few inches above it. Cat lets out a very unimpressed hum but _technically_ her boots weren’t on her couch so _technically_ Cat can’t fault the hero.

“That’s so _cool_ ,” he says, and he feels a little silly because he must have said that a hundred times tonight already but it _is_ cool and Supergirl grins. 

“You want to try?”

“Me?”

“Sure. If your mom is okay with that, I mean,” Supergirl adds nervously, and Cat sighs and closes the lid of her computer and comes to join them.

“What trouble are you trying to get my son into now?”

“No trouble, Miss Grant. But,” Supergirl checks with Carter to make sure he’s okay with it and he nods so fast Cat wonders if he now has super speed too. “Can I show him what it’s like to fly? Just a little, I promise,” she assures her with wide eyes. “Just in this room.”

“ _Please,_ mom.”

“If you let him fall,” Cat threatens, and Supergirl beams.

“Oh no, I won’t, Miss Grant! I promise!” she says earnestly and Cat’s lips turn up before she can’t stop herself. 

“Is that a yes, mom?”

“I suppose it is.” Cat narrows her eyes at the hero, but Supergirl doesn’t seem to notice. She whooshes to her feet and holds her hands out to Carter, who takes them without any hesitation at all. “You look awkward,” Cat comments, and Supergirl shrugs, frowning. 

“I haven’t done this before. I mean, not like this. Usually I’m just carrying people. I’ve never tried to show them what it’s like to just _fly_ ,” she says, and Cat can’t help but wonder herself what it feels like. Supergirl looks and sounds like she's buzzing right off the ground at the mere thought of it.

“Carter, turn around,” Cat says, when Supergirl hesitates still. “Honestly, Supergirl, problem solving is a very important skill.”

“Yes, Miss Grant.” 

“Now, put your hands under his arms. Will that work?”

“I don’t know,” Supergirl says cheerily. “Let’s find out!” And with that reckless announcement, she picks Carter up and slowly, slowly raises them until they’re three feet off the ground. “How’s that, Carter?”

She’s holding him with the lightest grip she possibly can, so that it feels almost like he’s hanging in the air by himself, and his heart feels like its leaping up and out of his throat he’s so afraid and so exhilarated and all he can do is beam down at his mother.

“Higher?”

“I think not, Supergirl,” Cat says, and though Carter would like very much to ask Supergirl to fly him around the city, high up into the clouds, they both know the best course of action is to obey. So he is lowered back down and Supergirl sets him down so gently he barely registers his feet touching the ground. 

“Thank you.”

“Anytime, Carter. That, uh, that is, anytime that you need it, not that I would take you flying _any_ time,” Supergirl scrambles to correct herself, catching the heated glare Cat sends her way. “Because you should be doing safe, human things, like, uh. Not flying.”

“Convincing,” Cat drawls. And again, Supergirl just _smiles_ at her but doesn’t say anything and she looks away quickly from the woman and back to Carter. 

He’s safe. He’s interviewing her and trying to figure out some secrets, there’s no doubt about that, but there’s some very firm rules in place where Carter in concerned and they more or less amount to _Don’t Hurt Carter_ and Kara can follow those rules like she’s flying through a clear blue sky. Cat Grant, on the other hand, everything surrounding her is murkier and Kara doesn’t quite know where to go next. 

She’s about to ask Carter if he has any other questions—she feels like she hasn’t answered anything, not really—but then there’s a quiet click in her ear and she turns away from the Grant’s and raises a hand to her ear. 

“Yes?”

“ _There’s a fire on the docks, a big one. Doesn't look there are any aliens involved but we’ve dispatched a team to be in the area in case one turns up.”_

_“_ I’ll be there in a minute,” she confirms, and turns back to Carter. “I’m sorry, Carter. I have to go.”

He nods. “Is something bad happening?”

“A fire. I hope I answered all your questions. Ask James to contact me if you need anything else.”

“Or you could give us your number,” Cat suggests, and she has no idea if the hero has heard her because she literally sprints to the balcony and throws herself up and off the side of it. “A goodbye would be polite,” she mutters, even as Carter sighs happily and throws himself back into the couch, relaxing now that it’s just him and his mother. 

“She’s so _cool_ ,” he says, and Cat hums an agreement, already on her phone. 

“Mr Olsen, I’ll need camera crews ready to go. There’s a fire, a big one—I don’t know yet, get your hands on a police scanner—do I sound like I care if that’s illegal, Mr Olsen? That’s right, now I want to _scoop_ all the others, I want them to know I’m in touch with Supergirl and I want them to seethe with jealousy, can you make that happen Mr Olsen? Your answer had better be yes.” She listens to him talk for a moment before sighing and hanging up. Carter has packed up all his things and he smirks up at her when she turns. 

“You could be nicer, you know?”

“They could all be more competent,” she disagrees, and he laughs. “Let me get my things. And in the car you can tell me what atrocious junk you want to eat for dinner. Chop chop.”


	4. Chapter 4

“ _Kiera_.”

One thing Cat absolutely despises about their new arrangement—purely professional, everything flat and quiet and cool between them—is that Kara is no longer four steps into her office as soon as she breathes in to call for her.

No. Now, she’s almost about to call her for a second time when Kara gets up out of her chair and she observes the other woman as she moves in. It’s not passive aggressive. Whatever Kara is, at least she’s mature enough that _dawdling_ to annoy her boss, to get back at her, had probably never even occurred to her. No. She’s just being slow. And the truth of the matter, Cat realises, is that Kara had cared. Before. She had cared enough to think ahead. To anticipate. She had _known_ enough to anticipate what she needed, because Cat had let her get close enough to figure those things out. And now, it’s almost as though Kara has wiped all of that from her memory and she stands in front of Cat with a pleasant enough smile. 

“Miss Grant?”

Cat blinks and then she’s back in business. “I need the layouts for the Tribune. I was promised them two hours ago.”

“Yes, Miss Grant.”

"And you can tell the digital team that if they want to _keep_ their jobs," she says silkily, touching an arm of her glasses to her lips as she thinks out the insult she wants to use today, "then those tumefied toads had better get their minds out of their squallid little day dreams and back into reality. Tell them," she continues, rather pleased with what she's threatening, "they had best produce something within the next, mm, two hours that doesn't encourage me to regurgitate my breakfast and feed it to them, since I must assume they're as incompetent in every aspect of their lives as they are here."

"I will tell them exactly that," Kara comments quietly, and when she taps at her tablet she swallows hard and Cat allows herself to imagine, just for a moment, that her purposefully professional assistant is trying very hard not to smile. 

"Hmm. Good."

Kara's eyes flash up to meet hers at the hum of approval but then the shock is gone. 

"Was there anything else, Miss Grant?" she asks, and she doesn't move in the slightest as though she knows that there is one more thing, and Cat  _hates_ that she feels relieved that Kara hasn't forgotten everything. 

"Get my art director up here. I want to speak with him."

“About Carter’s essay?” Kara asks, and there’s a spark of something in her eyes finally and Cat is surprised to realise that she’s missed it. She hums non-committedly and Kara ducks her head. She slipped up with that question. To recover, Kara makes a quick note on her tablet and then looks up again with that utterly pleasant, utterly meaningless smile. “I’ll get right on that, Miss Grant.”

She waits but Cat waves her hand and then she’s gone with a little nod.

James Olsen fights with her again about Supergirl—“it doesn’t _work_ like that, Miss Grant, I can’t just call her up whenever I feel like it” and his righteous indignation when she suggested he pretend to be in trouble to get her here possibly gave her an ulcer—and Carter had not so gently suggested that she stay at work late because he’s ‘working on his essay’ and ‘is not to be disturbed’ and here she is, at the end of a long day.

Alone.

It's nine o'clock at night and she's failed to get another interview with Supergirl and thus failed her son, failed at scaring her art direction into line, failed at scaring the Tribune team— _that_ , she thinks, she can blame on Kara who absolutely did not tell the digital team her insult word for word, though she must have told them something because within two hours she had something in her hands she didn't actively despise.

When she looks out her office to her assistant, who could have left hours ago—should have, perhaps, given that Cat has taken to dropping sly digs at her work ethic that she needs to stay behind so late—she feels like she may also have failed something very important, something important and nameless and  _huge_ and she sucks in a deep breath and her eyes linger on the other woman and she clicks her tongue. 

She should have left. What on earth was she still doing here?

“Kiera,” she says quietly, almost a sigh. She's not quite sure what she wants but that doesn’t matter because there’s no way that Kara had heard her.

Only, when she looks up a few seconds later, Kara is standing in front of her desk with that unflappable _pleasant_ smile. Oh, how Cat _loathes_ pleasant. Kara flinches and Cat wonders why on earth she would do that—until she feels the way her face has dropped into an icy glare. She turns her eyes to the side and works to soften her expression. Not wholly, but enough that Kara, hopefully, won’t look like she’s just been thoroughly and viciously scolded. “I need a drink.”

“Yes, Miss Grant.”

Kara makes her way over to the bar and Cat picks up her computer and her proofs and makes her way over to the couch. It's late, she's tired and her feet hurt, and she rests her eyes for a moment by looking out her window to the city. The noises of Kara pouring her drink and, Cat realises with a slight upturn of her lips, filling a half glass of m'n'ms for her, are soothing.

Kara hands her the drink, places the second glass down on the coffee table. Everything about it is perfect, of course, and she’s perfectly courteous.

“Anything else, Miss Grant?”

It's the perfect opportunity. To say yes, stay. To say, I'm sorry. To say, I made a mistake. 

But she doesn't.

She looks down at her drink for a moment and says, “No, Kiera. That’s all.” And then, slowly, “Thank you.”

Cat isn’t looking at Kara, but she feels her linger for a moment and then when Cat looks up next, Kara is gone and her bag isn’t sitting at her desk either. She’s gone for the night, then. Finally.

It feels like no time at all has passed—it’s an hour or more, actually—when Supergirl arrives. Cat looks up from her computer and smiles.

“I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Weren't you?” Supergirl raises her eyebrows. “James told me you were asking for me.”

“Shall I start expecting you every time Mr Olsen tells me I can’t have you?”

Supergirl’s eyebrows lift a little higher still at Cat’s phrasing. “No. I was, I came to talk with Carter,” she admits softly with a slight hesitation.

Cat sets her laptop to the side and stands. Supergirl’s eyes don’t stray from hers—disappointing, really, and she thinks that with all the careless effort she puts into the slow and purposeful way she walks, her hips deserve a look or two—though she does take a step back when Cat gets close.

“Why?” Cat drinks slowly from her glass and _there_ , she sees that too-fast flicker of her eyes when Supergirl glances down at her lips. Cat can’t help a smug smile and Supergirl must notice it because in a split second, the hero’s arms are crossed over her chest and her face is impassive and distant again.

“I promised I would let him interview me. I had to leave early, I’d like to make it up to him.”

“Hmm. Yes,” Cat concedes, Supergirl wasn’t lying. “But why else?”

Supergirl hesitates. “I like him.”

Cat waits. She’s good at waiting, when there is a story involved. And, she admits, she has a feeling about this. About Supergirl. She named her for a reason—for more than just the fate of the Tribune. And she feels like she’s close to understanding.

But Supergirl doesn’t break. A minute, two minutes, pass and she shows no sign of discomfort. She looks almost…relaxed. Peaceful. And then, Cat shifts slightly and Supergirl’s eyes drag back to her and she stiffens and takes another step back.

“Does Carter have more questions?” she asks, and Cat nods. “I will be here at eight pm tomorrow. Will that suit?”

Oddly enough, it did fit into their schedule. Cat nods again, and then Supergirl is gone.

It was becoming something of a habit, she notes, slightly irked.

//

“I’m really glad you offered a second interview, El. Most of what we talked about last time was confirming what I already knew.” He’s a little shy, uncertain, about calling her El but she doesn’t say anything so he thinks it must be alright.

“I promised I would, Carter.”

He tilts his head to the side, frowns. “Are you alright?”

“Yes.”

“Really? You look really uncomfortable.”

Supergirl relaxes from her rigid pose and sighs. Her voice is softer when she speaks next, and he knows he was right. “I’ve been very busy lately. I’m feeling the effects.”

“You’re tired,” he translates, and she smiles. Just a little.

“Yes.”

“I’ll try and be quick about asking you questions. You—do you need sleep?” She nods and he makes a note of that. “Cool. What’s your favourite superpower?”

“You haven’t guessed?”

“Flying, right?” She nods. “Why?” He lifts a hand, stopping her before she can speak. “I totally get that it’s really cool to be able to fly, but I really do mean _why_ is it your favourite?”

Supergirl thinks about it for a while, turning the question over in her head. She wants to give him something to write about, but more than that she wants to be honest with the young man she grew so quickly to adore. He made it easy.

“I think…because it’s freedom. It’s not defensive or aggressive. It’s something just for me.”

“But you use it when you’re fighting someone.”

“Yes,” she says, “but… How do I put this. Bulletproof skin is useful because no matter how hard someone tries to hurt me, they can’t. And my heat vision is helpful because it’s a weapon, as is my strength. But I don’t have to be fighting an enemy to fly. Any time I want, I can go. Anywhere I want.” Those words are tinged with a little sadness, but Carter doesn’t want to interrupt to ask why. “I like to fly up high above the city, sometimes. Up into the clouds and just above them so I can watch the sun come up. The colours are like nothing else on this planet.”

“Will you take a picture for me?”

Supergirl’s eyes widen and then she grins. “I’ll see what I can do.”

He grins and ducks his head in a nod and fires off his next questions, wanting to be true to his word at getting this over with fast, no matter how much he’s enjoying it. “Do you ever use your powers when you’re at home? Do you _have_ a home? Or do you have, like, a cool lair of something? My mom wants to know if you have a day job too, but you don’t have to answer that one.”

“I have superspeed, but I can only answer questions so fast,” she says when he takes a break, but their first interview must’ve given him the confidence he needs because he just grins. “Uh, okay, I do use my powers, they make getting ready in the morning so much easier. I like to sleep in,” she confides with a sly wink.

Outside, Cat’s head pops up. Carter is _laughing_ , and Supergirl is smiling and Cat can’t wait to get her hands on the transcript, hates having to wait.

“I do have a home and I have a lair as well, which is very cool.”

“And a day job?” Carter asks, just to see how far he can push. Supergirl just smiles. He rolls his eyes. “Okay. Well, that was basically all background stuff. I wanted to confirm because my teacher said I had to ask my own questions and do my own interview instead of talking information from other sources.” Supergirl nods. “But,” and he swallows and grips his notebook tightly in both hands, “you’re a hero, a real hero, which is why I want to write about you,” he tells her. “How do you do it?”

“I was gifted with superpowers—“

“No, not that.” Carter frowns down at his page thoughtfully. “Every hero,” he says, “is a hero because of a reason. What’s yours?”

Supergirl stares at this boy—young and bright and apparently capable of cutting right to the hardest question in the amount of time it took to run a hand through her hair—and then away. “I suppose a part of it is because of my home.”

“Because it was destroyed?”

“No, my,” she looks a little surprised. “No, my home here. On Earth. On Krypton, there was a saying. _El mayara_. It means ‘stronger together’. But on Krypton, I had everything I needed. The perfect life,” she says wistfully. “I was just a child. There were no fights to win, not really, but here,” she pauses. “I have put it to use every day. I’ve had to.”

He wants to ask more about that—what is your home like here? Who is your family? You only just came out, what fights have you had? Why do you need to be stronger?—but he decides to leave it.

“What was Krypton like?”

She looks unspeakably sad for the barest moment—the expression is gone so quickly that Carter thinks he must have imagined it—then she is smiling. “Oh Carter, it was beautiful. The spires rose so high into the sky, I was told that returning to it was like returning to a silver forest, that it felt like becoming whole again when my father stepped in amongst the spires because of the way the wind sings. And the _spires_ , they were so beautiful, they twisted up and up. From my bedroom window, I could see all of the city laid out in front of me. It always looked like it was moving with the sun. And the shadows of the mountains, so far away, were so tall that when the red sun set they just touched the edge of the city. Everything was clean and bright and smooth, everything was _beautiful_.” This time, when she looks away, Carter is sure that she is looking at something that isn’t there. “The air was sweeter there. Like…” She grimaces, just a little. “You have no taste here that compares, but it was like the sugar mist they use in drama clubs,” she says, sounding abruptly very human. “To make fog, do you know the ones?” He nods. “It was sort of like that and nothing like that at all,” she laughs, corners of her eyes crinkling when she smiles.

“Did you have powers there?”

“No. Your yellow sun lets me do the things I do. Rao did not.”

“Rao?”

“Our sun. Our father.”

“You worshipped the sun,” Carter realises. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Not the sun,” she corrects him gently. “Rao. He was the first to be born, and he is the father of Krypton. Was.”

“Can you tell me about him?”

“I don’t remember all that much,” she admits. “He was the first to be born out of the void and he brought order to chaos. He ordered the stars first, because they were bright, and next he ordered the planets, because that was right. And finally, he ordered the waves and the orbits and turning of time. And when he was done, he was lonely, and he created Krypton and it’s people.”

“And the Kryptonians?”

“We began as young people do. Strong and fast and quick to fight. And Krypton, though the most beautiful of all, was vast and red all over and food grew sparse and the tribes warred over what little there was and protected their own fiercely. The earliest years in our histories are red—bloody and violent and the names of the dead were too many to recall—and so we laid down our weapons and we recognised our enemy as our own blood and embraced them. And together, we built and lived and shared what little there was and together, we shared our rewards and Krypton, in unity and peace, became strong and prosperous and lived as one.”

She says it, all of it, as though it were memorised, as though it was a story she had heard many times before. Carter is enthralled.

“So the families came from the original tribes?”

“Perhaps. I wasn’t old enough to memorise the entire histories,” she says, and her tense posture relaxes and her voice returns to normal.

“Not old—wait, weren’t you a baby? How do you remember anything from your planet?”

Supergirl hesitates for a long moment before she tells him, slowly, “I was thirteen when I was sent away. My cousin was a baby.”

“But he’s _older_ than you are.”

“Are you sure of that, little human?” Supergirl asks of him in a voice changed, more than human. Carter’s eyes open wide and he holds his breath until she laughs and shakes her head. “Technically, I’m older. But in another way, I’m younger.”

“That doesn't make any sense. Just because you’re an alien doesn’t mean you can mess with ages.”

He sounds like he thoroughly disapproves—actually, he sounds like he’s _telling her off_ , and Supergirl laughs again.

“I’m sorry.”

He glares at her for a while longer then looks back to his notebook. “You were saying something about your human family. You said you’re a hero because of them.”

“Do you remember what I said about _el mayara_?” He nods. “I am who I am because of the lessons I have learned from them. Not just the people who took me in, but the people who aligned themselves with me. I have been very lucky to have been surrounded by strong people who have taught me right from wrong, who have helped me to grow, inspired me to be better and do better. Who have shown through word _and_ deed what it means to be strong, to put others ahead of yourself. To accept help when you need it without shame. To offer help freely, without malice.”

She knows she sounds formal, that she has sounded formal and a little archaic and distant throughout most of the interview, but she isn’t human and it feels right to put the distance between them. Besides, these are real lessons she was taught and if he’s writing an essay about people he admires, well…All those traits he admires, she learned from others.

“Your mother helped too,” she adds very quietly, and Carter looks up with wide eyes. He glances sideways at his mother, who taps away on her keyboard and has no clue that she has been mentioned. Supergirl is looking at her with careful eyes and Carter doesn’t quite know what he’s seeing.

“My mother?”

“She’s a very smart woman. She’s given me advice many times, inspired me to be a better hero. A better person.”

“ _My_ mother?” he repeats, only joking a little. He’s curious— _he_ knows the kind of person that his mother is. But most people don’t. Most people don’t bother to know, don’t bother to look past the coldness and the drive.

But Supergirl looks back to him with a small smile like she knows that he’s trying to test her and she smiles down at him. “Do you have more questions?”

He looks down at his sheet and gnaws at his bottom lip worriedly. “No. I’m done. For now,” he adds, and she nods.

“When is this due? I’m sure I can manage another interview if you need it.”

“Really? Thank you so much!”

“Of course.”

“El?”

“Yes, Carter?”

“I just wanted to say,” his eyes are trained on the carpet and Supergirl can make out that the tips of his ears and the back of his neck are flushing hot. “You don't have to take a photo for me. If you don't want to. You're busy," he says, "I understand," he adds, and Kara feels her heart sink as she sees his head low, sees him kick a little at the leg of the coffee table and tug at the ends of his shirt sleeves and she thinks that he might be awkward because he thinks he's overstepped in some way, asked for too much.

"I would like to share it with you," is all she says to that, and she knows it was the right thing to say when he  _beams_ at her.

//

When Cat comes in to work the next morning, there is a plain package in the middle of her desk. She freezes in place—it’s not like she's never had to suffer through a bomb threat before—and waves her hand at Kara, who comes quickly to join her.

“Where did this come from?”

“Oh, umm,” Kara fiddles with her glasses for a moment. “James. Olsen. Mr Olsen came by, a few minutes ago. He dropped it off.” Cat turns to raise her eyebrows at the other woman— _really_ , _Kiera_? her gaze seems to say, _still with the crush_?—and Kara drops her hand to her side and says, all in a rush, and quietly, “He said it’s from _her_. A gift.”

Cat turns her head very slowly to her desk. She examines the package again. It’s long and flat, rectangular, and wrapped in brown paper tied with twine. There is a white crisp envelope—a note—tucked underneath the twine. It takes her a moment but then she sees the CatCo embossed on the top left hand corner of it. Shock and a tiny drop of delight well up in her chest—the _audacity_ of her hero, using Cat's own stationery to write her a note. 

“Well lets see what it is, then,” she says, and her eyes widen with shock when Kara dares to put a hand on her wrist to stop her.

“No, Miss Grant. It’s for Carter.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s for Carter,” she repeats with a little frown. She points to the note where, indeed, her sons name is written ever so neatly on the front of the envelope.

Cat sighs and gives a delicate little shrug. She’ll have to refrain, then. When Kara doesn’t immediately take her hand away, Cat moves her eyes very purposefully to her hand and Kara gasps and _rips_ her hand away, pushing both her hands tight behind her back, taking a few hurried steps back until she knocks into the couch and stumbles a little, apologizes breathlessly to the couch.

“Oh gosh, I’m sorry Miss Grant, I didn’t realize—"

Cat walks away, and she’s glad that with her back to her assistant, Kara can’t see that she’s smiling. That was anything but professional.

She had missed it.


	5. Chapter 5

Carter swings by after lacrosse that afternoon _finally_ to open his package. Present, Mr Olsen had called it when she had called him up and into her office. Not that she doesn’t trust Kara—she grimaces to herself when she realises that whatever distance they have between them, she does still _trust_ the woman to look after Carter—but Mr Olsen had heard it from Supergirl and she wanted to hear the hero’s words verbatim because Carter remained very much _her_ son, thank you very much.

“It’s a gift,” he had told her, forehead crinkling a little as he tried to remember Kara’s exact words when she’d shoved the parcel into his hands. “For Carter, Miss Grant’s son. She said it was safe and he’s expecting it.”

“Hmm.” Cat had touched the arm of her sunglasses to her lips. “Alright.”

She’s been itching to open it all day but Carter would never forgive her if she did, and so it had remained unopened and untouched in the chair opposite her all day. A _huge_ distraction, if she was honest.

She would have to draw up a bill of compensation for Supergirl. Precious time wasted.

And if she’s a little more honest, she takes it out on Kara. An extra coffee run when her drink isn’t hot enough—Kara returns quickly with a steaming cup and Cat is almost positive that she just heated it in the microwave instead of ducking down to Noonan’s to have one made fresh—and up and down the elevator so many times to archives and the art department and to _fashion_ , the horrid twits had decided that _carnations_ were a fashion statement of all things, and twice to HR to pick up warning notices for several employees who had displeased her. Kara takes all of it in her stride with that pleasant little smile, a little distance in her eyes, and Cat continues to push her because it doesn’t bother her. She’s her boss and far too busy to worry about her assistant, and it’s all very professional and emotionless and simple.

Finally, Carter arrives, and he has his thumbs tucked under the straps of his backpack and he stops at Kara’s desk first and talks with her for a few moments and Kara’s eyes flash nervously over to Cat. When she sees her watching them, Kara drops her eyes and her smile falters and she hands Carter a snack and waves him into his mother’s office.

“Hi mom.” 

“Carter.” Cat gives him a fond smile and leans back in her chair. He hesitates, face scrunching up worriedly.

“You look really pleased. Like, snatched a new reporter out from under Lane’s nose happy.” He narrows his eyes. “What happened?”

“You have a gift.” She stands and lifts the package—it’s light, she already knew that because _perhaps_ she had looked over every inch of it and _perhaps_ she had tried to peek inside but it was double wrapped and she couldn’t tear it or unwrap it without Kara seeing and she was being particularly watchful, annoyingly enough (though, Cat admits to herself far far in the depths of her brain where she doesn’t have to acknowledge it, Kara’s attention is something that she has been missing). When she hands it over to Carter, he frowns harder and carries it a little awkwardly over to the couch.

“Who is it from? Is it from Dad?” His voice is a little small. His father has done that before—given him a gift instead of keeping to their agreed dates—and Cat rushes to reassure him.

“No. Your father has told me he still plans to be here next week.” Relief and cool anger mix in her chest when Carter sags and smiles at that. “No, this is from someone else.” Cat sits down on the couch opposite and positions herself, leaning forward just a tad. She wants to see Carter’s face when he realises. He’s looking over the package carefully and she’s been staring at it all day and can’t stand to wait a second longer so she carefully suggests, purposefully casual, “Why don’t you read the note?”

He looks a little bemused by her sharp attention but nods and slips the note out from underneath the twine.

The card is heavy and almost warm, a thick card stock courtesy of CatCo, and the writing on it is neat and sharp and impersonal in block letters and black ink. Like someone might do if they didn’t want their writing to be recognised, Cat thinks, but dismisses the idea. If they really didn’t want to be recognised, that was what computers and printers were for. The sentimentality of writing a card by hand surely wouldn’t outweigh protecting an identity.

Though, if there _were_ a person who would do something like that, their first name would start with a K and their last name would be Danvers.

Carter’s eyes open impossibly wide and when he’s done reading the note, he _flings_ it at his mother, grabs the top of the brown wrapping paper, and _tears_ it open. His fingers scrabble at the edges of the tear and rip it open further to either side and, when his gift is revealed, he lifts it from the remnants of its wrapping with tender, shaking fingers and looks down at it in awe.

It’s a painting, Cat realises.

It’s a painting of the clouds and the sun and she remembers him mentioning that Supergirl had promised him a photo of the sunset from her point of view but _this_? This was not a photo, this was a painting. On canvas, with thick paints, a canvas as large as a television screen. This was effort and dedication and affection.

Cat looks down at the card and reads it.

_Dear Carter,_

_It was a delight to speak with you these last few nights. I cannot tell you the last time I have been given the chance to speak on many of those topics, and talking of my home especially can be difficult at times. You made it a joy to tell you of its beauty and of the people who matter to me, so I thank you for that._

_I know I promised you a photo of the sky and sun, but I thought perhaps you may enjoy seeing what I see, rather than just the sun captured on film._

_All my best,_

_El._

“El?” Cat murmurs to herself. She hasn’t had access to Carter’s transcripts yet—she _wants_ them, now more than ever—but if he has discovered Supergirl’s real name it’s something that he has kept close to his chest. Out of habit, Cat turns the card over and her lips twitch when she sees the small post script.

_P.S. I have included a photo as well, in case that is what you were after._

Kara knocks lightly on the door to Cat’s office a decent half hour later and enters when Cat looks up and waves her in. Kara spares Carter a glance—he’s sitting still, not having shifted at all, staring down at his gift in his lap, hands are loosely curled around the edges of it and occasionally he blinks but other than that, utterly still—but she doesn’t stop, or touch him, or even look at him oddly. Just an appraising glance, thoughtful, and she carries on until she’s standing next to Cat.

“Miss Grant, the contract you were after.” She lays it down and points to the first tab for Cat to sign, flicks to the next page so Cat doesn’t have to touch it, points out the second tab, and they continue on until each of the seventeen required signatures are in place and Kara bundles up the contract and clips it together.

“Is he alright?” Kara asks Cat quietly, nodding ever so slightly toward the boy.

Cat glares at her sharply—her son is _perfect_ —but Kara isn’t looking at her. She’s watching Carter with curious and curiously tender eyes and Cat sighs.

“He’s somewhat overwhelmed. He just needs a little time to work through it.”

“Sensory overload?” Kara asks. Cat blinks. It’s not an _uncommon_ condition, but Cat has found that people only know about it when they experience it themselves, or family or a friend.

She allows herself to wonder who Kara knows, then squashes the thought.

“Something like that, yes. He’ll be just fine, thank you. Kiera,” she adds, and she sees the sly little sideways look that Kara gives her like she knows that she slipped up. But too professional to point it out, Cat notes with a touch of bitter laced humour.

“Is there anything else I can get for you, Miss Grant?”

“No. You may go.”

But she doesn’t. She crosses the room to Carter’s side and she kneels on the floor next to the couch and Carter doesn’t look at her but she gets the feeling that he’s listening.

“I guess I was right, hey Carter?” she teases softly. “She does have a soft spot for you.” She waits for a moment and when she’s absolutely sure that his lips turn up the tiniest, tiniest amount—supervision does come in handy, sometimes—she smiles gently back at him. “Good night, Carter.”

//

It’s much, much later when Kara’s phone lights up with a text. Her eyes catch the time first—11:53—and she groans because she’s only just stumbled into bed a half hour before and she had hoped that she would get to sleep right through the night. Then she sees Cat’s name and she sits bolt upright.

“No, no, no,” she mumbles to herself, the very tips of her fingers feeling clumsy and numb and she enters her passcode wrong twice before finally getting it. Cat has never messaged her this late before, something has to be _wrong_ , she thinks.

Her worry rushes out of her instantly when she sees the message waiting for her is from Carter and the worry is replaced with a faint glow of affection—no. It runs deeper than that. More than affection, it’s something more concrete than that. Kara is good at defining warmth, Kara _loves_ being warm, she loves the sun and candles and fireplaces, she loves warm pie and all things that bring her closer to heat and light and that buoyant weightlessness she gets from the sun.

This feeling in her chest feels like, is identical to, that morning six years ago as winter had threatened its approach and autumn was clinging to the trees with fragile gold and she had walked down to the park with her sister to take advantage of the last sunny day of the season. They had laid down on a blanket on the grass and Kara had tilted her head up toward the sun and they had been in shorts and light shirts, cardigans tucked away in their bags, and Alex had worn a sunhat and complained bitterly about how easy it was to burn and she suggested the hill beneath a tall tree that dappled everything with pretty shadows, and as the memory comes back to her in a rush, Kara realises that she probably loves Carter.

_Good night, Kara_ — _Carter :)_

* * *

Carter arrives after school the following day—he’s been around a lot lately, and Cat’s mood improves every time, which doesn’t help her cold Queen of All Media reputation but certainly makes her employees look at her like she might even be _human_ instead of terror in human form—and after a short conversation with his mother, he exits her office and sits at Kara’s desk. He looks entirely immersed in something on his phone. Only the red tips of his ears show that he’s a little embarrassed and Kara smiles down at her computer and pushes her snacks over to the middle of her desk so that he can reach them. She’s sure that when he wants to talk to her he will. 

They sit in companionable silence for the most part—he pulls his laptop out after a while and she rearranges a few things on her desk so that he has space—and then, without looking up, he says, “Can I interview you?”

“Sure, Carter,” Kara says breezily. “What for?”

“About my essay.”

“Your essay,” Kara repeats, nodding, and then she freezes. Her smiles feels suddenly too large, too forced, and she clears her throat and touches her fingers to her glasses. “Me? For your, your essay?” she laughs. “The one you’re doing about people you admire?” Her voice rises embarrassingly high at the end there and he peers over at her with the very slightest amount of distaste. Clearly, Carter shares his mother’s dislike for rambling.

“Yes.”

“But thats, that’s Supergirl. And your _mom_ ,” Kara argues.

“Yes.”

“And…you want to interview me? Really?” He just nods and Kara gapes. “I…have you asked your mother? I don’t think she would like that very much.” Kara is intensely aware of the open door to her left but keeps her eyes on Carter. 

“She said it would be fine. So?”

“Oh. Well.” Kara adjusts her glasses again. “I, okay then. Sure. Of course I will.” Once she’s agreed, it’s easy to go back to being helpful. “Any questions you need. And if you need help proofreading anything, or coming up with some great words or anything like that, let me know.”

He rolls his eyes at her—she grins at the gesture, takes it as a confirmation of affection and ease, and it _is_ but he’s too much of a teenager to admit to that—and shrugs. “Thanks, Kara.”

“Of course, Carter. When would you like to interview me?”

He frowns and pulls out his phone again to look at his calendar. “I have a science project I need to work on so I have to go home now, all my stuff for it is there. But you can come over to my house if you want.”

“I don’t think that’s appropriate.” Kara can just imagine the look Cat would give her if she were to misstep with Carter—one son, an estranged son at that, was bad enough. Clearly. That had taken her and Cat and brought them together in a way that had been nerve wracking but kind of fun, Kara had soaked in Cat's attention and approval, and then everything they were had broken in what felt like the blink of an eye. But Carter? Literally Cat Grant’s whole heart? She fights a shudder. “I don’t think your mom would like that.”

“She’s not as mean as people think she is,” Carter says, and he looks disappointed. In _her_. 

“Oh no, Carter, no. I know that. I just," Kara touches her fingers to her glasses. "I think that your mom works really hard to keep her home life separate from her work life and I don’t want to intrude on that.” Which is true. But also Kara has no doubt that Cat could be so far beyond mean if Kara screwed up again.

“Oh.” He nods at that and falls silent.

Kara is a little disappointed that he's given up. She was kind of, well, she was thrilled at the idea that he would want to interview _her_. She’s just Kara Danvers, but he wants to interview her—even with Supergirl and _Cat Grant_.

She puts some files away in a cabinet two floors down and takes the stairs back up because it’s faster than waiting for the elevator and she likes sitting with Carter. And also, Cat is making that clicking sound with her tongue which means that she’s infuriated with someone’s incompetence and Kara can count down to the second when Cat is going to call for her.

She does it when Kara sits down, calling out a sharp “ _Kiera_ ”, and Kara knows it’s one more calculated move Cat has made to dig at her. Professionalism was just a cover for making Kara’s life hell—extra effort, extra attention, extra focus, and far fewer emotions were Cat’s demands.

It’s a phone call this time, and a very carefully worded insult that Kara does her best to circumvent but she makes it very clear to “Jerry?” down in Financing that if they didn’t cut down on staplers, someone was going to lose their job. The fact that his name actually _is_ Jerry doesn’t escape either of them and Jerry gulps heavily and promises to fix it.

“What if I come over to your place?” Carter asks as she hangs up and she makes a note on her notebook and hums agreeably.

She would like that, she loves having friends around, and she’s three seconds from nodding when her mind makes that tiny leap to all the things she would have to hide—her art, all of that, anything that even _hinted_ at art. She would have to hide her supersuit, of course, her computer, her sisters weapons stash. Sure, her place is nice and comfortable and he would have fun, but there’s no denying that it would be a lot of effort and she can’t look at her place with unbiased eyes and see what could possibly give her away.

She presses her lips together into a flat line and readies herself to tell him no, when Cat steps in.

“Carter, leave her one small safe haven from CatCo. And I’m sure that it is small. I doubt you would even be able to fit in her shoebox apartment, darling.” Carter rolls his eyes to meet Kara’s gaze and Kara fights to keep her expression calm—from the way Carter smirks, she must have failed. “Kiera.” A sharp tone. “You have been to my city apartment before. I know, because of that disastrous example of child minding that you exhibited when you let Carter get on that train.”

“Yes, Miss Grant.” It’s Kara’s turn to sneak a look over to Carter. “We had fun though,” she murmurs, and Carter hides his face in his phone. “No lasting effects.”

“Negligence is no laughing matter, Kiera. The apartment. Be there tonight, seven o’clock. Do not be late."

“Oh. But I…” This was so out of left field, Kara feels like Non has punched her in the face and sent her spiralling through the air again. “What?”

Cat’s eyes narrow. “City apartment. Seven pm. If you make me repeat myself again…” she trails off, warning implicit and frightening.

“No, Miss Grant, I understand now.” She doesn’t. What happened to professionalism? She’s floundering—she’s _angry_ at the way Cat gets to switch between “professional” and whatever this is, because Cat is the boss, Cat gets her way, and Kara gets _nothing_ , Kara gets left behind confused and off balance. But she hides all of that behind her pleasant smile and makes a note of her appointment with Carter.

Cat’s eyes flash with something—anger?—but she steps back into her office and shuts the door.

_“_ Text me if you can make it,” Carter says, and he reaches over to scrawl his number on Kara’s notebook. “Or if you can't. Or just, if you want to." She smiles a smile that bunches up her cheeks, anger dissipating swiftly because Carter is sincere and sweet and he tugs awkwardly at the sleeves of his cardigan and bobs his head in a nod and flicks his hand in a wave. "Okay, bye."

“What was that all about?” Winn asks, and Kara turns to Cat’s private elevator where the doors are closing in front of Carter and she waves goodbye when he looks up for a second. 

“He likes me,” Kara tells her best friend happily. “He _admires_ me. He wants to interview me for his essay.”

“Wow, that’s, that’s really something,” Winn says and Kara frowns because that did not sound supportive. “No, it is really, just, uh,” he scratches his neck with slight discomfort and lowers his voice so only Kara and her super hearing can catch the words. “Have you thought about how similar your cover story is to the very _famous_ ‘my home planet exploded and now I’m an undercover alien doing good deeds wherever possible’?”

“Oh.” Kara snaps her pen in her hand. “Oh no. Oh _crap_. Oh no.”

“Yeah…” Winn grimaces with shared concern, pats her shoulder, and wheels back to his desk.

There’s that to think about. Kara is sure that she can manage it. After all, she’s mild-mannered, nothing special Kara Danvers. And she won’t underestimate Carter—he’s _smart,_ he’s really, really smart—so she’ll be careful.

A question occurs to her and she asks it when the clock ticks over to five. Her shift has ended so, well, there's no way that she'll get away completely with questioning Cat's orders but at least she's not doing it on the clock. Right?

She steps into Cat's office and looks at the other woman until Cat rolls her eyes. 

"What do you want, Kiera? To cry again and tell me your goldfish died and you need a week off?"

Kara ignores her. She turns over several hundred different wordings, different ways of saying it, and settles on, “Why are you letting me do this?”

Cat sighs. “Excuse you?”

“Why are you letting me go to your apartment? Why are you letting me talk to Carter?" Kara steps closer. She hears her tablet creak under the pressure of her hands and hurriedly makes herself calm down. It's hard, though, when she remembers the way Cat cuts through everyone and turns everything to her own advantage, and when she thinks about how she used to be excited and almost relieved to be called into Cat's office and how it's all _ruined._ "You can't keep pushing for professional and sweep it aside whenever it suits you.You can’t keep _doing_ this to me, Miss Grant,” Kara says, face flushing, and she pulls back a little when she's finished. 

“I’m doing nothing,” Cat snaps. “Carter wishes to interview you, so he will. There is nothing more to this." Cat meets her eyes, purposeful and firm. "Is that clear?”

The fact that Cat has to say it at all makes it clear that there _is_ something going on, but her gaze tells Kara there is no leeway concerning this. None. She’s more than toeing the line now, she’s hovering over it and she’s about to crash to the ground and it’s her choice which way she falls but she has to be careful and choose correctly.

As much as she wants to press, that would be the end of Kara Danvers, assistant. Cat would fire her, she would lose CatCo, and she would be Supergirl. That would be the end of that.

So she clenches her jaw shut firmly, even though she feels like she’s about to burst into flame. She swallows and nods once, sharply.

“Crystal clear, Miss Grant,” she grits out and Cat watches her turn, grab her bag, and leave.

_Don’t be late_ , Cat sends her ten minutes later and Kara’s answer is the epitome of professional and somehow feels anything but. Cat’s stupid, _stupid_ demand is splintering around her and she’s frustrated and Kara is furious and nothing has been fixed by the distance she has demanded.

_Of course, Miss Grant._


	6. Chapter 6

_“Damn_ , Kara,” her sister comments when she sends the boxing bag rocketing backwards, even with the Kryptonite filters on higher than usual. “Warmed up? Ready to spar?”

Kara grins a cocky grin and bounces on the balls of her toes. She has so much aggression building up inside her, burning in her chest and concentrating itself in her tense, steel-cord wrists and hands and of course whatever she punches will break before she does but sometimes, infrequently, she thinks about fire and about her own bones shattering in a _pulse_ of energy and it makes her hit harder and for longer. 

Today, she isn’t quite at that point. Confusion and hurt and pain still twists up inside of her and it practically begs to be let out in violence so she slams her fist into the bag one last time and winces when a bit of the sand begins to dribble out of a ripped seam. 

“Sorry.”

“We really don’t have the budget you think we do,” her sister comments, stepping up by her side. “Bad day at work?”

“Something like that.”

Alex turns to look at her, dark eyes full of concern. “Kara, if you need someone to talk to…”

“I know. But for now, I just really want to punch things. And I broke the bag.”

“So you _are_ ready to spar then,” Alex says with a little grin and Kara nods and follows her into their sparring room, hops up onto the platform. Alex narrows her eyes and pushes the filters up higher, until Kara feels the sickness and the fatigue barely set in, and Kara grits her teeth and lifts up her arms. She can still fight, she can still stay on her feet, but this will force her to be smarter. It’s a bit of a dick move and Alex does it when she thinks that Kara is getting ahead of herself—too angry, too confident—and wants to prove that with enough strength and the right opponent, she can still be taken down. 

Still be killed.

As if Kara needs the reminder. She can still vividly feel her own uncles hand around her throat, lifting her up into the sky, and forgetting all of her training when fear took over and she throws the memory aside when Alex whips out the first punch because dwelling on it isn’t going to help. 

“Good, Kara.” She nods. Shakes her hands out. Lifts them up to her face. “Good. Again.” Then Alex is flat on her back. She stands again, and nods. “Again.” This time, Kara goes down and Alex hauls her back up to her feet. She needs the moment to catch her breath but she ignores the feeling and lashes out for Alex’s feet, taking advantage. “ _Again_.”

Kara goes down again, cheek smarting, and she spits out mostly saliva but a little blood. Alex wavers but, catching the look in Kara’s eyes, shakes her head. “Keep your guard up.” And so it goes, for an hour, and Kara pushes herself harder and harder and Alex is mostly proud, because Kara isn’t hesitating anymore when she goes for that winning strike, but at the same time she can’t ignore that niggling fear because Kara has _always_ hesitated before.

She doesn’t know what the change means. 

She remembers the way Kara had wavered in front of James Olsen and had finally, _barely,_ relented to his argument to let Maxwell Lord out. Kara is changing and the loss of her aunt and everything that’s going on with her boss is changing her more and Alex can protect Supergirl but for once she is at a loss at how to protect her sister. 

“Winn called me,” she says and she takes advantage of the way Kara freezes, confused. She kicks her legs out from underneath her and drops so her knee is pressed to Kara’s chest, just under her throat and taps her knuckles lightly against her cheek. “Again.”

“He called you?”

“He said that Carter wants to interview you. _Kara_ you.”

“I’m always Kara.”

Alex rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

Kara lifts her hands preparing to fight again and then shakes her head. Her hands drop. “I’m done. I have to go.”

“It’s a terrible idea. You gave him an interview as Supergirl, you’ve _done_ your part. More than.”

“Alex,” Kara snorts, “Come on. It’s a school essay. And Carter is, like, the best kid in the world. He deserves the help. I’m _happy_ to help.”

“I know you are. And that’s admirable. If you’re doing it for him.”

“What?” 

“Tell me that you’re doing this for him. Tell me that you’re doing this _only_ because of Carter and not because you want to get back into Cat Grant’s good books because Kara, Kara look at me,” she says when Kara rolls her eyes and turns away. She takes Kara’s wrist in her hand and squeezes gently. “She’s not worth it.” Kara swallows hard and avoids looking at Alex because she thinks a lot of things about Cat Grant but she doesn’t agree with that. “She hurt you when you broke up with Adam, she’s ruined what CatCo does for you—”

“That’s a little bit Hank’s fault, actually,” Kara tells Alex and the anger that roils up inside her, remembering his face when he had come to her and said those words like he expected her to understand, _I killed her, I’m sorry, I could see no other way,_ gives her the strength to pull out of her sister’s hold. 

“Kara,”

“No, look Alex, I get it. Cat isn’t the nicest person in the world. But she isn’t a villain and even after everything, I still respect her. Personal relati—“ Kara stops. “She might not let anyone get close, but she’s still doing amazing things and I still want to work for her. That's why I started there in the first place, remember? I wanted to change the world.” Alex huffs a little fond laugh and nods. Her eyes remain wary, worried. “Besides, she won’t even be there tonight. I’m going to talk to Carter and then I’m going to leave.”

“This interview isn’t a good idea,” Alex warns. “You have to be careful.”

“Please, I remember every word I’ve ever said to him. It’ll be _fine._ ”

“Alright.” Alex rubs at her forehead, nods. “Alright. I just don’t want you to slip up and get hurt, Kara.”

Kara softens a little. Her shoulders relax and open from their tense stance and her lips quirk up. This is the sister that Kara knows—Alex has been _weird_ and _distant_ lately and Kara doesn’t understand, though she thinks it must be because of guilt, because she was there when Astra died, but she has to know that Kara doesn’t blame her for that. Alex’s eyes are warm and worried and her hands are protective and gentle like they always have been, even though the older girl knows that Kara is invulnerable she has always been gentle. When those hands and arms curl around her shoulders and bring her into a surprisingly desperate hug, Kara sinks into her and brings her hands up to return the gesture. 

Other than the sparring, this is why she can tolerate the Kryptonite. She can hug Alex back firmly and not be afraid of breaking her. 

“You’re the best person I know,” Alex murmurs to her. “Some people—“ The _Cat Grant_ isn’t said but, by Rao, it’s heavily implied, and though Kara still disagrees, Alex’s tangible disapproval makes her grin a little, “—aren’t worth what you give them.”

“Okay,” Kara says. Not because she agrees, but because it’s almost seven and she had promised Carter. 

Alex must know she’s lost this round because she ends their hug and steps back and nods. “I guess I’ll watch the Wire without you.”

“Don’t you _dare,_ Alex!”

//

She’s out of her training clothes and into her own—just a pair of jeans, a shirt, and her runners because it’s not work so she doesn’t have to dress up and she’d learned while she was babysitting Carter that he was energetic right up until his bedtime, when he would fall face first into his pillow—and she uses a few bursts of super speed to get to the building on time and have time to pick up a pizza on the way. Okay, two. But she finishes the first one before she arrives so she won’t stuff herself silly in front of Carter. 

_See_ , she tells Alex in her head. _I’m being careful_.  _I'm not going to be suspicious. It'll be fine._

She texts Carter that she’s down stairs and he gets the doorman to let her in and she’s surprised to see that he’s taken the elevator down to greet her. 

“Hey, Kara.” He doesn’t quite meet her eyes but she gives him a smile anyway and joins him in the elevator. His reluctance for small talk doesn’t mean anything—he came down to greet her, she knows that he’s excited to see her again.

There’s a happy little buzz in her chest and her smile pushes up a little further, a little brighter, and Kara realises that she’s happy. Really happy to get to spend time with him. He’s funny and smart and fun and she’s looking forward to hopefully turning the interview into more of a gossip session. He had mentioned a few names of kids at school last time and she wonders if he had managed to befriend any of them. 

“I brought pizza," she says needlessly when Carter opens the door to the apartment. She’s holding the box in her hands—Carter has obviously seen it, and smelled it—and she lifts her eyebrows when he rolls his eyes. 

“Can we sit in the kitchen?” he asks. He shoves his hands into his pockets—he’s wearing shorts, Kara notices, and she smiles a little because he looks very young with slightly messy hair and little knobbly knees and a soft looking shirt with _SUPERBOY_ emblazoned across the chest. 

“Sure.” Kara places the box on the island and drags out two stools from underneath the breakfast bar. “I eat here in my apartment all the time,” she confesses. “And on the couch.”

Carter spares a wide-eyed glance at the obscenely expensive couch in their living room. “We could _never_ ,” he whispers, and Kara purses her lips. 

“Well…”

“Kara, no,” he laughs, and then he laughs again, a little shocked, when she picks up her plate and sits cross legged on the couch. “I’ve sat on that thing _four times_ in my _life_ ,” he hisses. 

Kara shrugs. “You’re not missing out. It’s not very comfortable.” She remembers abruptly that this isn’t just an expensive couch—this is _Cat Grant_ ’s expensive couch, in _Cat Grant’s_ home. Cat Grant, her boss. And she stands as smoothly as she is able, hoping her clumsiness won’t assert itself.

“Come sit in here,” he urges, and breathes out a sigh of relief when she returns to the kitchen and sits with him there. “I’m glad you didn’t ruin it.”

“I’m not _that_ clumsy.”

He narrows his eyes—she’d had a few close calls when they had been having their nerf gun battle and she concedes his point with a rueful twist to her lips and silence. He moves on. “We don’t really use that room anyway. It’s for entertaining. Only Katherine sits there.” She doesn’t miss that he calls her Katherine instead of grandma, or even grandmother. “Anyway, do you want to see our fun zone?” he asks.

“I saw it last time. The massive beanbag is yours, right?”

He nods and grins, obviously pleased that she remembered. “Mom bought it for me.”

“It’s really cool. I’ve been looking for one on eBay for my apartment but,” Kara shrugs. “I haven’t found one yet.”

“I’ll ask mom where she found it,” Carter promises right before he starts to eat. “How was the rest of your day?” he asks, words almost incoherent as they slip out around the pizza in his mouth. 

“Hey, no talking with your mouth full,” Kara chastises. A cheeky look comes into his eyes and he shrugs easily, opening his mouth to show her the mashed up remains, making her grimace. “Ew, Carter.”

They talk—Kara about work, Carter about school, and she gives him a disapproving look when he confesses that he hadn't finished his homework. 

"It's Friday, Kara, I can do it over the weekend." She waits and he sighs. "I _promise_ I will finish it, okay?" That's good enough for her so they move on.

Theyfight over the last piece of pizza—Kara lets him have it, since she’d eaten a whole other pizza before arriving—and Carter eats it standing up, hand held out to stop Kara from trying to take it from him. She doesn’t even try, just laughs as he skirts around the island to keep her a safe distance away when she packs up their plates to clean.

“I’m not going to take your food,” she laughs. “It’s safe, Carter.”

“I saw you ogling it.”

“I wasn’t _ogling_ ,” she blusters. “If anything, _you_ were ogling. Do you need to get a room?”

“Nice come back. Where did you learn that one, grade school?”

“Har har.” She hasn’t got a come back so she just says, “You’ve got sauce _all_ over your face, by the way. It’s hard to take you seriously.” He shrugs and wipes at the streak with his sleeve and Kara hides a wince. She’s pretty sure that Cat wouldn’t like anything that has happened so far—eating in the kitchen, eating _pizza_ in the kitchen, getting sauce on Carter’s clothes—but Cat isn’t here so Kara makes herself relax. It’s easy, with him. She _loves_ him, she remembers vividly when he joins her at the sink and takes the washed and dried plates to put away. It starts in a small spot behind her sternum and spreads, _warm_ , to fill her and she hums happily. 

“Kara?” He’s looking at her with a small frown. Not annoyed, just curious. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I don’t know. You just look…weird.”

“Thanks, kid,” she laughs. “I’m happy. This,” she shrugs, nods at him, “this is nice.” A blush takes over his face all in a rush and he ducks his head low. “Anyway, ready to get destroyed at Wii Sports?”

“Not unless you suddenly gained the ability to actually use the remote instead of flail wildly.”

“Oh, you’re on, kid.”

//

He brings up the topic of the interview later, when they’re laying on Carter’s enormous beanbag. She can’t even see him, the fabric has pushed up between them. She could reach him if she had to, but she can hear his elevated heart rate—they had flopped down a moment ago, after Carter had trounced her for the ninth time at Wii Archery—and he blows a curl of hair out of his eyes. 

“What’s your favourite food?” he asks her and she grins.

“Chinese,” she admits after a moment. She has to run quickly through everything that she said to him as Supergirl but that’s not giving away anything. “ _Pot stickers_ ,” she groans at the thought. “Yum.”

“We literally just ate.”

“ _Yum_.”

Carter laughs and sits up a little before slamming down into the beanbag to make her pop right up and out of it. He laughs again, louder this time and he looks surprised by that, and Kara drops very carefully back down next to him again. She _really_ doesn’t want to send him flying out the window. She would catch him but she thinks Alex wouldn’t like that. Or Cat. 

“Alright, next. What’s your favourite holiday?”

She pauses again but he’d never touched on this with Supergirl so, again, it was safe to answer. “Thanksgiving.” His breath hitches and with a flick of her eyes—super vision enabled—she sees him hunch a little miserably in place. “Carter?”

“Even though you’re adopted?” It’s not what he wanted to say, but Kara is pretty sure that if she answers, she can ask him a question.

“Your mom told you that?” She hears the polystyrene balls shift when he nods and wonders why Cat would have told him that. Why on earth Cat would have talked about her at all. “I was fostered, actually. And yes. They’re my family. We don’t get to spend a lot of time together, Eliza lives kind of far away and me and my sister,”

“Sister?”

“Alex,” Kara tells him, and even she can hear the love and, yes, maybe even reverence in her name. “She’s older.”

“Cool. I’ve always wanted a sibling. Maybe we can adopt one.”

Kara laughs. “Maybe that’s something you should ask your mom about. It’s not a quick decision. Anyway, we get together and we have food and play games and it’s normally really nice.”

“Normally?”

“Well. This year your mom got attacked by Leslie,” Kara reminds him, and he hums thoughtfully. “And Eliza had a fight with my sister but that was weirdly a good thing? I don’t know. They had some stuff they needed to talk about.”

“Why do you call her Eliza?”

“Why didn’t you have a good Thanksgiving?” she shoots back.

Carter shifts around for a full minute before he tells her, very quietly, “My dad and I were supposed to go to my grandparents place for dinner.” She can hear the way his heart starts beating faster, hears the faintest sniffle, the too fast blinking of his eyes. She can hear the tremble in his voice he tries hard to conquer and her heart aches for him. She reaches across the distance and takes his hand. “He went into work. He promised he would be back in time so that we could go but,”

“He wasn’t,” Kara says when Carter stops. It isn’t a question. She’s been around long enough to know that his dad has done this before, too many times. 

“Yeah.”

“Did you tell your mom?”

“No. She gets so mad and hurt and they yell and fight even more than usual and I hate it.” Kara feels him move and he swipes a hand over his cheek and holds tighter onto her hand. “Why do you call her Eliza?” he says again. 

“Because I remember my mom.” Kara didn’t think she would say that—she didn’t even _think_ of the answer she would give him and she pauses for a really long time sifting through what she said about Krypton and about her mother to make sure that it isn’t too similar.

Her hesitation must get to Carter because he says, “You know, Mom isn’t here. You don’t have to think about what you’re going to say. I’m thirteen, I’m _basically_ an adult.” She swallows down her laugh at that—he’s so young, sweet and kind and honest and _young_ and the pronouncement just feels funny to her. “Just…tell me the truth. If you want to. I just…I think we’re kind of,” he hesitates, “friends now. Aren’t we?”

“Yeah.” Kara _beams_ up at the ceiling and she’s glad Carter isn’t looking at her because she’s floating a good centimetre off the beanbag. “We are. We totally are, Carter.”

“Cool.”

Warmth floods her chest when he says that. It holds the same tone, the same delight, as when he had talked about Supergirl’s powers, about _Supergirl_ , and she isn’t Supergirl to him but he clearly thinks she’s super in some way. And as _Kara_. 

No one thinks that about her other than Alex and Winn and Eliza and that’s just, it’s really great. 

It’s easier to talk to him after that, and she tells him more about her sister and about being fostered, about being in a new home and in a new town and having to learn a new language and that was a slip up but he just turns to her with an interested look and she tells him that she used to live in Canada, and had spoken mainly French with her parents, because she does know French and she did spend some time in Canada after college. She talks to him about what a panic attack feels like and he nods solemnly and looks down at his hands when she mentions the overwhelming sensations and the contrasting loneliness, like nothing can get through to her through the swirl of too much, and she scoots over a little on the beanbag and lets go of his hand so she can wrap her arm around his shoulder and he leans in. 

He tells her about his parents divorce, and about school and the other projects he’s working on, and about his mom. A lot about his mom, about what they do together on the weekends and about how much fun they have, and Kara gets the unsubtle pointed conversation and can’t bear to tell him that she knows Cat is a good person but it’s Cat who has stopped them from being friends. So she just listens and he moves on—he _has_ made a friend at his school, a girl his age who is kind and smart and really quiet, “kind of like me, and she has no friends either so we get along really well” and she’s glad of that. 

It’s nearing nine-thirty when Kara’s stomach grumbles and Carter looks _horrified._

“You ate half that pizza, Kara. How can you still be hungry?”

She shrugs. “Do you want me to get dessert?”

“We don’t have anything here, mom says it tempts her too much. And I had a _small_ cavity at my last dentist appointment,” Carter says and rolls his eyes. He does that a lot, and Kara knows it’s because he’s comfortable with her, and she nudges him just hard enough to roll him off the beanbag.

“Come on, kid. Get the bowls out, I’ll pop down and get something from the store.”

“There’s a bodega half a block east,” he says. And then, “I like chocolate!”

//

The door is open when she returns and Kara’s heart skips a beat and she uses a burst of speed to make it to the door—what if Carter is hurt, what if they're being robbed, what if—but it’s just Cat, standing just inside the doorway. She hasn’t noticed her yet, and by luck, she didn’t notice the inhuman speed Kara had used. 

She’s taking off her coat and before she can think about her actions, Kara puts the chocolate ice-cream carton down on the hallway table and steps forward to help Cat.  Her fingers brush ever so lightly against Cat’s hair when she grips the collar of the coat lightly, and the woman freezes in place. 

Kara copies her, her heart now beating twice as fast and she’s sure that her expression echoes her confusion and panic so she wipes it clean and swallows it down. She can’t quite manage the mask she’s been wearing in the office, that politely distant one, by the time Cat has shrugged out of her coat and stepped away. Instead of trying, she avoids looking at Cat altogether. She folds the coat over her forearm and turns away to open the door to the closet. Disappearing into it—honestly, a hallway closet the size of her bathroom at home isn’t _necessary—_ she takes a moment to centre herself, and ghosts her hand fondly over the second coat in there, dark blue and obviously Carter’s.

When she steps out, Cat is right there. 

A moment to centre herself does nothing when it's Cat Grant you're facing.

Kara gulps and steps back. Only, instead of stepping back into the closet, the door has closed and she is pressed flat against the wood. She wants to look away—wants to fumble for the door handle and disappear—because Cat Grant is _looking_ at her. 

No. Not looking. Staring at her. _Examining_ her. From head to toe and head to toe _again_ and then she fixes on Kara’s eyes and she hasn’t said a word yet and Kara can’t smell the faintest hint of alcohol so what exactly is happening and, more importantly, _why_?

Kara can only stand there, absolutely still. She feels pinned by that intent stare and suddenly breathless and she can only imagine what Cat sees. Breath coming too fast, glasses a little wonky probably, casual clothes and, Rao, probably a grease stain from the pizza. She _would_ be that unlucky. She's boring, uncouth Kara Danvers, so  _why_ is Cat still staring at her?

She doesn’t know what is happening but Cat is moving closer. Fingers brush electric over Kara’s wrist and Kara isn’t breathing but her breath _still_ hitches at the touch. Her thoughts are getting hazy—all she can think about are Cat’s lovely, lovely eyes looking right into hers. 

“Everything is fine!” Carter yells out, following a crash that sends Kara jumping a clean foot into the air. Cat, rather more calmly, takes one step back and away from her assistant. “It’s fine! Nothing is broken!”

“It had better not be,” Cat says, and there’s a pause and then Carter is standing at the end of the hall.

“Mom! You’re home early.” He hugs her around the waist and she leans down to kiss the top of his head. “Kara, did you get it?”

“Absolutely, kid. You think I’d come back empty handed?” She’s relieved that her voice doesn’t shake— _she_ feels shaken, and confused, and warm, and her heart hasn’t quite settled—and she slips back to the hall table to pick up her prize. “Chocolate double choc chip extraordinaire. Exactly what the doctor ordered, right?”

She laughs when Carter’s eyes light up.

“It’s exactly what the _dentist_ forbade,” Cat says in a voice heavy with disapproval, and yet she takes down three bowls from the cupboard and just raises an eyebrow when Kara grins. 

There’s a faint ping in her ear and, on the counter, Kara’s phone buzzes. She snatches it up maybe a little too fast—Cat has left down a hallway Kara knows leads to the Grant’s bedrooms and the two (two!) guest rooms, so she doesn’t see it, but Kara doesn’t have time to check if Carter has because she’s reading the message lightning fast. 

_HQ. PROBLEM. ASAP._

“I am so sorry,” she says, pushing the ice cream reluctantly down the counter toward Carter. He pops the lid of it and drives his spoon right in. “I have to go. My sister,” she tells him and holds up her phone, and he nods. 

“Is she okay?”

“She can more than hold her own,” Kara assures him quickly. “I’m sure everything is fine, but I need to check.”

“And it can’t hurt to have a little help from Supergirl.” 

Kara halts. A garbled little noise raises out of her throat and she coughs. Great. Not suspicious at all. “What, uh, what are you talking about Carter?” She glances down at her phone—Alex has messaged her again. _ASAP MEANS ASAP_. She has to leave. Like, _now_. But this is important too. 

“We can talk about it later,” Carter shrugs. “You should go if your sister needs you.”

“I—“

“I won’t talk to mom about it.” Carter continues to scoop his ice-cream into his bowl and he’s acting like he hasn’t got this enormous secret in his hands—he’s acting like the most powerful girl in the world isn’t right next to him, doesn’t have the power to snatch him up and, and she can’t even finish that thought, which is probably why Carter isn’t scared at all. 

Kara is torn. By Rao, she needs to fix this—Alex will _kill_ her if she finds out—but she needs to get to the DEO headquarters now and Kara shake her head. Fuck it, she’ll get Hank to visit him tomorrow and come along for the ride. She might not be able to look at Hank at the moment and the thought of him pretending to be her—he _killed_ her _aunt_ —makes her feel sick to her stomach, it would be worth it because this isn’t a secret that Carter can have. Not that she doesn’t trust him, but the thought of him in danger terrifies her. 

“Carter,” she laughs, and reaches up to touch her glasses, “I’m not,”

“Your sister is calling again. It’s probably important.” He looks up finally and gives her a really small smile and Kara can see that he’s not going to budge on this front and she doesn’t have time to talk him out of it so she just shakes her head. 

“I have to go. Say bye to your mom for me. And I’m not Supergirl, Carter.”

“Whatever you say!” he calls after her, and she takes the stairs twelve at a time all the way down the building and runs down seven streets until she’s far enough away to push up and into the sky. 

//

It’s not an enemy alien or any enemy at all that is attacking the DEO headquarters. 

It’s Lucy Lane in civilian dress and she’s obviously been locked in one of the holding rooms—bulletproof and sound proof—and when Supergirl appears, she _glares_ at her. 

“Oh god. Her too?” are the first words out of Kara’s mouth.

“Too?” Alex shoots her a sharp look. Kara conjures up the weakest smile of her life and Alex’s glare could be weaponised. Should be. “Kara, god _dammit_ , what did you do?”

“Nothing! Carter is just, he’s really smart and apparently _super_ intuitive and he might…be a little suspicious. That’s _all_.”

“That’s all?” Alex repeats. “That’s more than enough—I told you to be _careful_. _Dammit!”_ Alex snaps and turns sharply away. Kara recoils. She tries to hide the sharp hurt at Alex’s anger, because Lucy is watching them closely and because Alex turns around again to face her and her shoulders drop and her face softens, and she says, resigned, “Kara.”

But Kara doesn’t want to hear about how she’s ruining everything so she takes a step back and shakes her head. “No, yeah, I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ll deal with it. But I,” her eyes slide over to Lucy. “I should go talk with Lucy. I need to fix that. It’s hurting James and me and I really like Lucy, so,”

“It’s not about liking her. Do you trust her with your identity? Your whole _life?”_

“I do.”

“Fine.” Alex purses her lips. “Fine, be irresponsible with your identity. You know what, Kara?” Alex raises her open hands, surrendering. “I can protect you if you let me, but I am not going to help you fuck up your life by telling half of National City who you are. You do that by yourself, alright”

“Maybe if you trusted people other than murderers, you would realise that I am _making_ a life for myself, not ruining one.”

Alex’s jaw works furiously for one incredibly long, tense moment. Then, she jerks her chin to where Lucy is now pacing in her glass box. “Go, then.”

In full Supergirl regalia, Kara slips into the room. “Miss Lane,” she greets the other woman quietly. Lucy glares.

“It’s Major.”

“I was informed that you had resigned your commission. I’m sorry.”

Lucy falters at her mild tone and then fires right back up again. “What’s your game here, alien?”

Kara frowns. “Game?” Then, a little hurt and trying hard not to be, because Lucy had said it with something close to revulsion, “ _Alien_?”

Lucy has the decency to look ashamed and she lifts her hands to her face to cover her eyes and breathes out a long sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you don’t deserve that. You saved my life from Red Tornado.”

“Yes. But I would do that for anyone, Lucy.” Kara hesitates. “Miss Lane.”

“Supergirl.” Lucy pulls her hands away and leans back against the bench that runs the length of the wall. She smiles a little, eyes sad, face set. “You have to go and be better than everyone else, don’t you? You make it really hard to be angry with you.”

Kara leans against the wall on her side of the room. Arms crossed. “I know why you’re here,” she says. She’s so tired, she just wants this to be over. “James spoke with me.”

Lucy’s eyes cut to the side of the room when she scoffs. “Of course he did.” She turns away and braces herself against the silver bench. Kara can read the lines of anger that hold her stiff, but the worry and the hurt are just as obvious. 

“Lucy,” Kara says, more gently. “There is nothing between me and James. Nothing. I don’t know the extend of his relationship with my cousin, but I can promise you that James and I are colleagues and friends. Nothing more.”

“Did you want more?”

Kara bites down on the inside of her bottom lip. It’s better to be honest, she decides. “I…for a while.” Lucy nods. “He’s very kind and handsome and I liked him.”

“What changed?”

Lucy turns back to face her and, when Kara smiles sweetly, she looks surprised. “He ran toward a bomb,” Kara tells her gently. “For the woman he loves. And I realises that he makes a wonderful friend and can to realise that he loves you, very much.” After a moment, Kara continues. “Lucy,” and she gulps because she can fly but telling people who she is, who she _really_ is, makes her feel like she can’t fly, like she’s free falling and the earth is rushing up to meet her far too quickly. “He asked me if he could tell you the truth.”

“The truth?”

“About us. About who we are. I told him no.” Kara grips the edge of her cape and breathes in, tries to take courage from the gift her cousin had sent her. The fabric is soft— _Kryptonian_ soft—beneath her fingers and she rubs her thumb over it tenderly. “This is my truth. I should be the one to tell you. I asked him to keep it a secret and that wasn’t fair of me.” She squeezes her eyes shut tight. “Lucy, I have to know that I can trust you with this. Not only for me and my family, but because I’m worried for your safety.”

“I was in the army, Supergirl. I can keep a secret.”

“Can you?” Kara opens her eyes and lets her mask fall, lets every ounce of the worry she feels pour out of her for a second. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, Lucy.”

“Don’t want your hard work to be ruined?”

“I don’t want to lose another friend."

“…Friend?” Lucy looks closely at her and the beginnings, the very faint start of understanding glimmers in her eyes. 

Seeing it, Kara turns away. She ties up her hair and says, as she turns back, “You’ll have to imagine the glasses. I must have left them outside.”

_“Kara_ ,” Lucy breathes. She takes a step forward, eyes flicking over her face and then down to the S and back up to her eyes and hair and finally she says, “Oh no. I was so mean about Supergirl at our game night.”


	7. Chapter 7

“Kitty, darling, look I really can’t stay long. I really only popped by to ask you about something your son mentioned—have you _really_ let him talk with that Supergirl figure? Alone?” Her mother’s eyebrows—plucked and waxed and possibly re-drawn—raise almost to the edge of her hair. 

She’s trying out a new look. Probably something she has picked up from someone far more intellectual, far more sophisticated. Cat supposes if she were even to ask, her mother would let her know quite quickly that there’s no point in trying to explain, Cat wouldn’t know the person, wouldn’t understand what the haircut, the whole look means. As if she hadn’t run a fashion magazine for four years. 

Cat puts her drink down on the coffee table lightly. She smoothes her hands down her skirt and stands. “Drink, mother?”

“Oh no. I have a very particular palate, I can’t drink what you’re having.” 

She probably drinks something with lemon, Cat thinks. It would explain the constant sourness. That, or it’s a fundamental element of her personality, a deep rooted dislike of herself and the person she has become, that has no choice but to turn up in her appearance and her treatment of others. 

“I’ve stocked your favourite scotch.”

“I doubt that, it’s rather exclusive.”

Cat turns away so her mother can’t see the indelicate way she rolls her eyes. If _she_ doesn’t want a drink, Cat still does.

“Now Kitty, please pay attention. I know all this television isn’t good for focus but do try. This is important. Having your son spend time with this, this _foreigner_ ,” she puts it delicately, “simply isn’t a good idea.”

“There is nothing simple about it.”

“Kitty.” Her eyes glitter darkly under the disapproving cut of her brows. “No good mother would allow her son to be so close with someone so dangerous.” Cat sucks in a breath but what can she say to that, that blatant slap? Katherine continues. “Although I suppose you’re doing it because it’s good for your image, hmm? The princess of, oh what was it? All the silly names people throw around, I can’t keep up. But there,” she claps her hands closed on her lap. “I do hope he brought back some juicy gossip for you, Kitty, otherwise what’s the point of having hi—”

“Don’t,” Cat hisses. “Finish. That. Sentence.” She lowers her glass to the counter with a clink and fights hard the desire to just call up security and have her mother escorted out. Now _that_. _That_ would do nothing good for her reputation or peace and quiet. “Don’t you ever question how much I love my son. Don’t you _ever_ do that.”

Katherine bows her head a fraction. “Of course not, Kitty,” she soothes. “That was harsh, I’m sorry.” Cat blinks. An apology wasn’t what she had expected. But in another breath, her mother continues to live down to her expectations and her view of the world is re-affirmed. “I’m only looking out for the boy.”

Cat recovers. Tosses back the last of her drink. She returns to her desk and smiles over at her mother. “I’m sure. What _is_ his name, by the way?”

Katherine doesn’t answer, which is answer enough.

“Supergirl,” Cat says, seating herself primly in front of her computer and sliding her glasses back on, “is a remarkable person and, at the moment, CatCo’s highest profile asset.” If she were to look just an inch to the right of her mother, she might notice Kara at her desk beyond the glass walls. She might notice that Kara sits a little straighter, and that her head is tilted just _so_ as though, for instance, she were listening to something. “Supergirl,” Cat continues, and her eyes linger a little longer on her assistant, “is no freak. Supergirl is _extraordinary_ and she is mine. That’s not bad for my image at all.” 

Katherine’s eyes narrow to wicked, curious slits. “What an interesting way to phrase that, Kitty.”

Cat’s eyes drift from her mother, over to Kara, who is looking into her office with a carefully blank expression. “Isn’t it?” She re-focuses on her mother. “Being such a highly successful editor, I’m sure you understand the power of subtext.”

“I thought you had rethought that after college.”

“As it turns out, I’m an incredibly powerful, popular, and attractive woman. It also doesn’t hurt that I’m very rich. So,” she shrugs, “I do what I want.” She taps her finger thoughtfully against the spacebar of her keyboard before she reaches over to the phone and presses down on the intercom. “Kara,” she says, not looking away from her mother. “Have someone help my mother to her car please.”

“Yes, Miss Grant.”

“And I suppose she is one of the things you want too?” Katherine says, and Cat tries to lift her finger from the intercom before Kara hears that, but she can _see_ Kara gasp and the way her eyes widen. “I didn’t forget the way you defended her last time. You’re quite right, I have an excellent grasp on subtext.” Katherine stands and slinks over to the chair where she placed her bad. It’s only a few steps but they have the distinct aura of a predator circling prey and Cat doesn’t like it.

She’s not a child anymore and her mother can’t make her feel like this.

“Whatever was between the two of you is over, isn’t it?” Katherine shrewdly surmises. 

Cat lifts her chin stubbornly. Instantly regrets it. With anyone else, that might not mean anything but her mother knows she’s right and Cat just doesn’t want to admit it. 

“Be careful, Kitty. Unless she’s getting _something_ from you, she’ll be the next one out the door.”

Cat doesn’t hide the roll of her eyes. Her mother lacks finesse and outside of her tiny, tiny pretentious literature niche, she knows very little. She’s tactless and flailing, and Cat shouldn’t pay her the slightest attention. Katherine’s ‘worries’ are just sly digs from a woman is is uncertain about her place in life and who makes herself feel better by undermining others. That’s all. They certainly aren’t a reason to feel all over again that she’s twelve and young and _crying_ in her room because her mother had once again informed her of all the ways she was failing.

She considers for a self-indulgent, spiteful moment whether she should fire her therapist—with the amount of money she was paying her, Cat should be past this unfortunate reaction. But it’s not her fault. Mothers, daughter. Those relationships are more difficult than they reasonably should be. 

Cat realises that she’s been silent for too long and she scrambles for something cuttingly distant to say, to show she doesn’t _care._

Kara beats her to it. 

She steps a short way into the office and Cat relaxes a little. Kara has that look on her face. The, _I’m going to fix this,_ one. It’s reassuring and lovely in equal measure and Cat hopes that she can read the thanks in her eyes. 

“It’s time for you to leave,” Kara tells Katherine firmly. “I’ve asked for your car to be brought around, Ms Grant.”

“Look at you,” Katherine murmurs. Her fingers close around her bag and she steps toward Kara and Cat freezes. She doesn’t look directly at her mother but she plants her hands on each arm of her chair and readies herself to stand at the first sign that she’s going to attack Kara. “You’re still enamoured, you poor thing. To work here you mustn’t be particularly bright so let me spell it out for you, dear. My daughter doesn’t _really_ care about you.”

Kara has heard worse from Cat’s own mouth so she just smiles and checks her watch. 

“Would you like me to fetch your coat, Ms Grant? Your car is waiting.”

“There are ways to make something of yourself without giving into immoral requests. It might be easy to give in—you want to keep your job, I know, I understand," she soothes. "But she can’t make you do anything, and you don’t have to throw your future away for a few pretty pay checks before she sends you on your way. Work hard rather than spreading your—”

“That is _enough_ ,” Cat snaps, and she stands to stop this from happening, but her eyes slip to Kara and she falters. Her mask has slipped just enough to let them see. Her lips are white with fury, her eyes wide, and Cat’s words taste abruptly bitter when she swallows them. 

“ _How dare you_ ,” Kara hisses. Her hands drop to her sides. They are clenched into fists and Cat wouldn’t care at all if Kara struck her mother—if she did care, it would be because Kara isn’t not someone who hurts others and for her to get to that point means Sunny Danvers has shot right to boiling. “Do you even know your daughter?”

Katherine blinks. That wasn’t what she had expected to hear. 

Neither had Cat, if she was honest. But it doesn’t surprise her—of course Kara would defend her, the woman who makes her life hell, before she defends her own integrity. 

“Do you _know_ who she is? How she made herself what she is today? She is the most hard-working, ethical, incredible woman. Your _daughter_ is so smart and driven and _so_ empathetic. She would never force someone to do that.” Kara’s hand comes up to her glasses in a jerk, she’s so agitated. “She would send anyone who tried that with her far away. Miss Grant has worked every day to get ahead and she isn’t about to let anyone undermine that, to allow anyone to undermine themselves or what she's made, by compromising herself. And what she has made for everyone and for herself is nothing short of extraordinary. Don’t you know your daughter at all?”

Kara's voice doesn’t lift above a quiet murmur, but each word has such intensity and drive behind it that Katherine flinches backwards. It is smooth and treacherous, Kara's voice, and Cat, strangely enough, thinks of a royal wedding, silk sheets, and a knife in the dark. 

“And you don’t know Carter’s _name_?”

Cat lifts a hand to her lips, hides her smug smile. _Slipping, Kara,_ she thinks to herself. 

“What is _wrong_ with you? He’s the best kid. He’s the best kid, and he’s smart and funny and has the kindest heart and he always tries to do the right thing and you are a _nasty_ human being. Miss Grant want right. You cut down everyone around you because you think it makes you better but it _doesn’t_. It makes you a small, weak, unhappy person and I feel _sorry_ for you.” Kara stares Katherine down for a moment longer before she steps back, lifts a hand up to her glasses. “Mostly,” she says, “I just feel sorry for Carter. He deserves so much better than you. I’m glad you’re never around. You would just hurt him.”

Katherine doesn’t stay long after that. 

She doesn’t stay at all, actually, because Kara escorts her out herself, marching her out at a quick one two step. Cat watches the elevator doors close in front of her mother and, behind her mother, a glaring Kara. 

When she returns a few minutes later, Kara sits down at her desk and returns to work as though it had never happened. She doesn’t return the look Cat _knows_ Kara can feel boring into her and, after a few minutes, Cat accepts that they aren’t going to talk about it, at least not yet, and she returns to work. 

//

“I’m sorry for overstepping,” she says later, when the office is clear and she’s laying page after page in front of Cat for her to sign. 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Miss Grant, _please_.” Kara drags one of the guest chairs over, closer to Cat’s throne, and sits. “I shouldn’t have said those things. About Carter. I’m not his parent, I know that. I should’ve just had security show your mother out, I am _so_ sorry, I—”

“That’s enough,” Cat interrupts sternly. “You did nothing wrong. You said nothing wrong.”

Kara gapes. 

“Our…My decision for us to remain professional,” Cat says and Kara nods slowly. “It does not extend to Carter.” She looks away from Kara and in a movement quite unlike her normal self, she fiddles with the pages in front of her. “You are kind to him, and that is infrequent enough that I would find it distasteful to take that away. And,” she says more quietly, “I am glad that he has you.” Kara nods again, eyes wide. “Thank you. For defending him.”

From the corner of her eyes, Cat swears she sees Kara’s eyes flash—Cat imagines the colour red, just behind that fierce blue—and her hands clench on her knees then, gently, Kara reaches out and the tips of her fingers brush ever so slightly against Cat’s pinkie, the closest point of her body to Kara. Cat’s finger flexes in response. 

“Always, Miss Grant,” Kara promises. Her smile is so warm, and she takes her hand away to touch the frames of her glasses. Cat would give anything to know what Kara was thinking in that moment. “You were right. He’s really special, just like you said.”

“Yes. I know.” 

Cat leans back in her chair and something in her refuses to look away first. Every second that passes that Cat doesn’t look away hurls them further over the ‘professional’ line but Kara is warm and she’s _missed_ this, she’s missed the late nights and the feeling of, of camaraderie and something else, something shared that goes beyond. So she indulges herself, though it isn’t fair to Kara and they both know it.

After a few long minutes—longer than it should have been, too long not to _mean_ something—it is Kara who looks away, whose eyes slip down to the desk. 

“That was the last of the papers, Miss Grant,” she says, and she leans forward to collect them up.

“Thank you.”

“Of course.”

They trade these terse little comments and settle uncomfortably back into their separate boxes—boss, employee—and Kara leaves for home and Cat tries not to feel like she’s let another opportunity slip right through her fingers. 

* * *

After everything that has happened in the past few weeks, Kara can’t find it in herself to be surprised when Maxwell Lord shows up at CatCo.

He stops off at every level of the building—the gaggle of press that follows him constantly get to listen to him talk about why he’s taking the stairs, about some clever, clever new detail of his fitness line that he’s testing out today—and Cat comments with a huff that he does it “to prove he can single handedly distract every person in my building. They all want to _be_ him or _sleep_ with him.” She scoffs, cocks her hip out to the side to rest a hand there on the slope of her body, and she glares toward the stairwell. “It it weren’t against workplace policy, I would block off that stairway. Kara, look into that for me.”

“Yes, Miss Grant.”

“Then make a note of which floors have the lowest productivity today. They’ll get a carefully worded reminder that they’ve signed contracts detailing their required work hours and how they are supposed to be loyal to CatCo, to _me_. Not my sub-par “competitors”.” She uses air quotes to show her derision and Kara ducks her head to hide a smile. 

“Yes, Miss Grant. Was there anything else?”

Kara doesn’t dare look Cat in the eyes anymore. She can’t risk it. She doesn’t know what accidental or flyaway comment Carter might have made now that he knows. Carter is _the_ best kid in the world—as she has told Alex time and time again, even though Alex _ignores_ her and throws herself instead into every mission that doesn’t involve Kara—but best kid or not, Kara isn’t sure that he can withstand the super-interviewing-villain that is Cat Grant. 

“Miss Grant? Was there anything else?” Kara asks again, because Cat has been quiet for a very long time now.

She chances a look up from her tablet to see Cat staring right at her, the arm of her glasses held between her lips. Her eyes are warm and _soft_ and Kara swallows down the nervous sound she wants to make. Only, that gulp is plenty audible in the quiet office and Cat’s gaze burns over the length of Kara’s throat before it drags upwards, to her eyes. 

“That will be all, Kiera.”

Kara nods and turns and in a show of strength, doesn’t sprint from the office.

“Oh, Kiera?” Cat says lightly when she’s at the door. 

“Yes, Miss Grant?”

“Will I have to concern myself with your loyalties?” Her eyes flick to the stairwell where voices are echoing louder now, signalling Maxwell Lord’s arrival.

“I signed a contract, Miss Grant,” Kara says, and if she thought she would be pleased to see Cat disappointed, she was wrong. The warmth fades and Cat’s lips press into a thin line and she snatches her glasses from her mouth and slides them into place, nodding. The urge to help, to fix immediately what she had wrought, buffets her and she squares her shoulders. “My loyalties are with you, Miss Grant,” she adds, and she waits until Cat meets her eyes again. 

“With Catco, you mean.”

Kara remembers last night, defending Cat, hearing Cat saying that Supergirl is _extraordinary._ Hearing, even if it was from Katherine, that there is something between her and Cat. Remembers locking eyes with Cat and never wanting to pull away or be pulled away. Remembers Cat’s fingers brushing against her wrist and the spark it brought—she remembers thinking for hours about that minute Carter had interrupted, about what might have happened if he hadn’t, and she had replayed Cat’s approach in her mind over and over and over and over again and try as she might she couldn’t quite get what would have followed to play out just right and she had to start all over again. Kara tilts her head ever so slightly to the side in a movement that is not a no, but is decidedly not a yes either. 

Cat leans back slowly in her chair, hands moving to the arm rests, and she settles easily into the throne. She looks thoughtful and regal and powerful and a smirk settles into the corners of her lips when she looks over Kara again, luxuriating in what Kara has just told her. She nods slowly. 

“That will be all, thank you Kiera.”

“Yes, Miss Grant.”

Cat stays in her office when Maxwell Lord finally steps out onto their level. When everyone else, lead by an only _slightly_ ashamed Winn, falls over themselves to get close to the billionaire genius—an autograph and a gift for each, as well as the chance to talk to him, to even _shake_ his _hand_ maybe—only Kara and Cat remain at their desks. 

“Ah. Kara.”

He stops at her desk. When she doesn’t look up, he laughs. “Playing hard to get, I see. I like that.”

He pulls Winn’s chair from across the way—Winn has to remind himself to breathe, because Maxwell Lord is touching his chair and sitting in his chair, the chair he _also_ sits in, and it’s just a bit much to handle, he borrows someone’s desk to sit on and focus on breathing—and sits next to Kara, who is still typing away. 

Inside her office, Cat pauses. Lord taking a special interest in an assistant isn’t new. However, when that assistant is potentially her Supergirl and is _definitely_ her own Kara Danvers, Cat finds that she is…displeased by his attention. Even more so, because Max hasn’t come in to see her which means that unless she wants to relent and go out to meet him, greet him like she was waiting for him, she has to wait for him to come to her. 

Or.

She tugs the laptop towards herself and hesitates for only a second before she flicks the messaging app up onto the screen. 

_What does he want?_ she sends to Kara. 

_Nothing_ , Kara sends back instantly, and her shoulders hunch a little more. Her head is bent over her laptop and she’s studiously reading something on it even as Max talks away at her. 

“Nothing,” he laughs. “That’s not exactly true. May I?” He points to her computer, finger brushing close to her, and Kara yanks her body away, rolling her chair as far away as she can. She gives him a curt nod—he can use whatever he wants, so long as he doesn’t touch her. 

_I am offering her a job, please don’t interrupt_ , he types back and Kara glares at him when she reads what he has sent. She is up and out of her chair and into Cat’s office the very second Cat sucks in a breath to call her name. 

Rather than coming to stand in front of her and waiting for direction, Kara continues around until she is standing behind the grand heavy desk with Cat. First, to show him that her place is with Cat. Maybe not _next_ to her, but with her? Absolutely. And secondly, because if he says something stupid she can flip the desk over at and onto him. The thought makes her smile and she entertains it for a moment longer. 

Lord follows her in and observes the way Kara stands behind Cat’s shoulder, tall and silent and slightly murderous with a sweet smile. Just his type—other than alien, of course. 

“Tell me what is going on.”

“Well—“

Cat holds up a hand to stop him. “Not you. Kara?”

“I’m sorry, Miss Grant,” Kara says stiffly, “I wasn’t listening to him so I can’t tell you.” Cat looks gleeful at the unsubtle disparagement. 

“Ooh, chilly.” Max pretends to shudder and Kara narrows her eyes at him. “Please, I come in peace. It’s just a job offer. Hear me out, I assure you it’s all above board and _very_ reasonable.” Kara crosses her arms. Cat blinks. “I’ll pay out the end of your contract so you can come work for me. There’ll be better hours, better pay, you get to pick some of your own projects. I want to put you at the head of my managing team—it’ll be way more fun—“

“No thank you,” Kara interrupts. 

He doesn’t miss the way Cat relaxes ever so slightly when Kara denies him. 

Cat knows he sees it—Max doesn’t miss much. She picks up her pen and writes in _therapist_ in one of the blank boxes on her desk calendar. Her mother had got to her, apparently. _Unless she’s getting something she’ll be the next one out the door._ The thought makes her feel ill. And it grates, too, because she is Cat Grant and she doesn’t _need_ anyone. Other than Carter. She certainly doesn’t need her assistant. 

It’s the fact that her assistant is being _poached_ —and right in front of her, at that—that makes her burn with anger. 

“Come on, Kara.” He steps closer, makes sure Cat can detect the familiar tone he’s using. He’s using her _name._ Something starts throbbing behind Cat’s eyes. “You can keep an eye on me there.”

Neither Max nor Cat miss the way Kara looks at him then—like she’s seriously considering his offer, as Max knew she would. 

It’s honestly the smartest move. Kara shifts a little, uncomfortable, and looks to the ground. Cat lifts her hands from her desk and folds them in her lap, out of Max’s line of sight. They dig into the soft skin of her palm but no expression shows on her face.

“Plus, you must be dying to get out of this place. Everyone knows how Cat treats you. Her little lapdog assistant. Fetch and carry, right?” Max grins, easy and glib. “A collared falcon, more like.”

“That’s enough.”

“Do you beg for treats too?”

“ _Shut. Up._ I don’t know what game you’re playing but I’m not interested. And if you’re trying to endear me to you, you’re doing a _really_ bad job at it.”

“Sorry, sorry,” he holds his hands up in surrender but his smug smirk remains. “Touchy. But don’t lie to me—I know you’re interested. Very interested.” Kara grits her teeth. “Lord Tech will offer you opportunities. The like of which you really can’t get here. There are lots of projects, lots of advancements to be made.”

They both know he’s not talking about money or name. The things the DEO could do with his brain, with his tech… _She_ isn’t tempted but the DEO absolutely would be. 

“Besides, you know what they say about enemies and being close. In such close quarters, there’s a lot I can think of doing with you.” The suggestive tone masks his real meaning, a little. It has the added bonus of making Cat’s throat blotch ever so slightly with fury. 

“I’ve made myself very clear on where we stand, Max.” 

Cat reddens further with her assistant’s confirmation that she had been anywhere with Max, alone or otherwise. Kara crosses her arms and lifts her chin and he can faintly see Supergirl there, just behind the softness. 

He forgets about Cat and their charade, dropping his slime and charm. He’s a genius—he can read the energy of a room—and he knows exactly why Kara is tempted. All he has to do is play on that, he knows, and he’ll have her. 

“I’m serious. Think about it. There is so much opportunity at my company to do good. We can work together. I’m a genius billionaire philanthropist and have degrees in pretty much every field, yes, but I need someone as smart and driven and dedicated as I am so that everything runs smoothly and that’s you. I need your brain, I need your smarts, your talents.” He’s talking about Kara Danvers now, which was a mistake though he doesn’t yet know it.

Kara Danvers _despises_ Maxwell Lord. 

Kara Danvers _despises_ that a man thinks he’s clever enough to fiddle around with a hurt, dying girl and hurt her more. Change her. Subject her to his wonderful, wonderful plan simply because she can’t say no. 

Kara Danvers knows what he means when he says he needs her brain—she is Kryptonian smart, which here means that she is fast and clever and the balance in math and science is as beautiful to her as music—but she can’t unsee a cracked face, _her_ face, finally relaxing out of extraordinary pain when they essentially had to re-kill her. 

When the temperature of the room drops several degrees and Kara doesn’t shift at all, her eyes fixed on him and clearly holding back only barely from blasting him away, he realises that he has made a mistake somewhere. 

“Think about it. We have to talk at some point. You know that we do.”

“Make an appointment.”

“On your personal cell?” he quips, falling back into slimy playboy persona. Cat feels the crescents of her nails dig a little harder into her skin. “It’s a date.”

“It’s not a date.”

He clicks his tongue. “Ah well, a shame. I’ll call you then?” Kara barely gives him a nod. “It’s been a pleasure, Kara. Cat.”

“For you maybe,” Kara mumbles and she lifts a hand to her glasses. Max steps closer. “If you touch me, I _will_ have security show you out.”

“You won’t bodily drag me out yourself?” he asks, and he looks quickly at Cat before he drags his eyes purposefully over Kara.

“I will break your arm for you,” she offers, ever so sweetly.

“Hmm. Tempting, but I need both. Thank you though.” He pulls his hand from his pocket and holds it up. “Relax. I’m just leaving you with a gesture of good will.” It’s a USB, and he places it on the corner of Cat’s desk. Kara snatches it up before Cat can even move and Max smiles. “Your eyes only, Kara. You understand.” He gives Kara a slow smile—lecherous by any and every metric—and Kara huffs and picks up Cat’s work phone. A liberty he thinks anyone else would never take, one that would at _least_ make them hesitate. These two, the Supergirl assistant and the queen reporter, they’re another puzzle to consider. How lovely. 

“Hi there, Max Lord is in Miss Grant’s office and was hoping for an escort downstairs. Sure Luke, I’m sure he’d love to sign some stuff for your daughter. Okay, okay. Yeah, thanks.” She smiles saccharine sweet to their unwelcome guest and hangs up. “It’ll be a pleasure seeing you dragged out, Max.”

“Charming.”

When a burly security team shows up, he leaves with them. By the time they’ve reached the elevator, Max has at least one of them smiling at him but despite their awe, they still do their job and Kara listens as Max is taken down to the ground level and waits until she hears him settle into his car. 

“ _How did it go, sir?”_

_“You know I don’t like to discuss ongoing projects.”_

Kara lets her hearing shut down bit by bit, lowering the intensity until it’s just this floor and the one below that she can hear. Then, she realises that Cat is looking at her with a particular look and she gives her an uneasy smile.

“Did you say something, Miss Grant?”

“No.”

“I’ll go back to my desk th—“

Cat’s hand snaps out and she snags her, snags the closed fist, the one holding the USB, and she holds tight. 

“I’m incredibly wealthy, Kara. It may not be polite to discuss, but like most things, I don’t care for niceties. So let me reiterate—I am _incredibly_ wealthy.”

“Yes, Miss Grant.”

“Do you know that I spend a lot of money on the theatre?”

“Yes, Miss Grant. I buy your tickets for you,” Kara says, though she isn’t sure where this is going.

“That’s right. So you understand, then, that I can spot an elaborately staged performance when I see one. Like, for instance, what just happened.” Cat raises one perfect eyebrow and Kara wilt. “Explain yourself.”

“I—“ she swallows. “It’s embarrassing,” she offers. 

Cat doesn't look away.

“Okay. Umm.” With her free hand, Kara adjusts her glasses and she swallows again and does what she has to do. 

She lies. A little. She mostly tells the truth. But a little bit of it—like deliberately phrasing truthful things so they are less truthful to mislead Cat in order to protect her other identity—is a lie.

“He approached me after your Supergirl launch,” she starts. “He, uh, flirted with me?”

Also, the part where Maxwell Lord was flirting with her. That’s a lie too. 

“Are you telling me or asking me?”

“Asking you, I think. I’m not sure that it was flirting.” Cat rolls her eyes, mutters something that sounds like ‘ _Kara, honestly’_ and Kara hurries on. She tells Cat he contacted her several times—which was true—that they met when Carter was on the train—also true, but mentioning it doesn’t endear Cat to her at all—and then she tells her that they had talked a few times. “He said it was all business, made it sound like it was about maybe setting up talks with you about mergers with Lord Tech or something, but,” Kara shakes her head. “It never amounted to anything.”

“And I assume he was harassing you like he was doing today,” Cat finishes, frowning at the elevator. An employee scurries across her line of vision, head ducked low. 

“Yes, Miss Grant.”

“I see.”

Kara knows how unlikely it sounds—she’s Kara Danvers, assistant. There’s almost no way that Cat would buy her story that Maxwell Lord was _interested_ in her, but it’s the only story that fits all the pieces that Cat already had. 

“Do you want to take the job?”

“ _No_ ,” Kara almost shouts. She covers her mouth, eyes wide, and whispers, “Sorry. No, Miss Grant.”

“Very well.” Cat releases her hand. “I won’t ask to see the USB. I do ask that you don’t open it on CatCo owned computers. It’s possible that he’s been harassing you to get to the company and it could be a virus.”

“Yes, Miss Grant.”

Cat looks her over shrewdly. “His behaviour wasn’t appropriate, and I believe you when you say you aren’t interested, Kara. If you like, I can move to sue him.” She looks thrilled by the idea.

Kara shakes her head no. “But thank you, Miss Grant.”

“Hmm. Fine. Back to work, Kiera.”

//

Cat keeps her close, after that.

It’s a blessing and a curse. While she’s away from Lucy’s impatiently curious eyes—and her _questions_ , she has so many questions—she’s right next to Cat, who isn’t even trying to keep her distance. 

The woman mutters to herself, low and fast and angry about sloppy work and makes small barbed comments under her breath and Kara pretends that she doesn’t hear them but she can’t help smiling at some of them. When they aren’t directed at her, Cat’s insults really can be quite funny. If a little mean. 

The worst thing about it if when Cat lays her hand on Kara’s wrist. They’re looking at layouts Kara had collected earlier and Cat tells her to sit and starts to tell her exactly what is good or bad about the example. Kara holds the sheet and Cat leans forward to point with one hand and uses to the other to balance herself. After every point she makes, she presses a little harder onto Kara’s wrist and Kara feels her pulse jump its response. 

Cat’s skin is very white against her golden tan, Kara notices, and she doesn’t notice anything else until fingers squeeze against her wrist and tug her focus back. 

The whole ordeal feels orchestrated and purposeful and _possessive_ and Kara wouldn’t mind it in the slightest—she actually really enjoys it for a moment or two, because Cat is touching her carelessly and she’s giving her direction and proper work and sharing her thoughts with her again and asking for her opinion, and did she mention that Cat had touched her? But she does mind. Because Cat hasn’t said anything about it, and so Kara needs to operate on the assumption that they are still strictly professional, despite all evidence to the contrary, because at some point Cat is going to revert back to that and Kara will have to get used to it all over again.

And she’s not entirely sure that if she so much as nudges over that line, that she’ll be able to go back. 


	8. Chapter 8

They’re on the same couch with less than two feet between them. It’s a comfortable distance—close enough to feel the other when they shift a little, or to pass something between them, but not too close that Cat is aware of Kara’s too hot skin. 

Kara can’t _help_ but be aware—Cat’s perfume is subtle and intoxicating, just a hint, and Kara knows exactly where she touched it to one point on either wrist, that she smudged it against the underside of her jaw. She hears every sigh, every small small noise that Cat makes when she’s displeased with what she’s reading, the way the paper crinkles slightly under her hand. It’s distracting, but an undercurrent of distracting that is almost warm—she blocks it out, a little, and focuses on speed reading through the proposed articles. 

“It’s five o’clock,” Kara murmurs, hearing the clock hand tick into place. 

Five is officially, contractually, the end of her work day. Since Cat had changed what they were, she had started going home on the dot unless she was needed and Cat hadn’t said anything about it. Neither had Kara, other than asking if there was anything else Cat needed her to do before she left.

Cat hums. “I know.”

“Was there anything else that you needed, Miss Grant?”

Cat pauses, then settles her papers down on her lap. “No, Kara,” she says slowly. “Thank you.” Kara nods and leans forward to place the corrected articles on the coffee table. As she is straightening, Cat’s hand comes down into the space between them, firmly planted on the cushion exactly halfway. “However, if you would like to stay, I have some choices to make for the fashion section and I…” She pauses. “I would appreciate your assistance.”

“I—” It’s the offer she’s been waiting for—a sign, a hint of a sign, that she’s right. That they’re changing yet _again_. Because Cat has phrased this as a suggestion not an order, which means she’s not asking as Kara’s boss, which means this is something more. Something else, not just work. 

Naturally, when she goes to finish her sentence—and she’s not sure exactly what she’s going to say but it would have been a yes—her phone beeps quietly in her ear. Kara feels her face fall into familiar stern lines. She shifts a little until she is nearer to the end of the couch and she turns away to answer the call, pulling her phone from her pocket.

“Alex?”

“ _You have to get home_ ,” her sister says in lieu of a greeting. She sounds serious and guarded and not a small bit angry. “ _Now_.”

“What is it? What’s wrong? I’m at the office—“

“ _Your uncle is here_.”

“Are you hurt?” Kara asks, fury ripping through her at the idea. Her phone creaks in her hand. She will _tear_ Non into _shreds_ if he has broken the peace, broken Astra’s passage. She will leave nothing behind to be laid to rest. “ _Alex_ ,” she insists, and that ready fury bleeds into her voice. Cat hears it—Kara knows she has because in the reflection of the glass, she sees Cat’s head lift and the woman stares at her back. “What is going on? Talk to me.”

“ _I’m alright. I’m okay. He says he’s come back because you,”_ Alex clears her throat. She doesn’t sound in pain or afraid, but she’s always been good at hiding that. “ _You have to pray with him. Help Astra move onto the second half of her journey_.”

“Oh.” It’s a very small, sad noise and Kara’s shoulders fall along with her ire. With that gone, she’s left cold and she shivers a little. “Yeah. I… Okay. I’ll be there soon.” 

She stares down at her phone for a moment before she slips it into her pocket. Not quite up to facing Cat just yet, she smoothes shaking fingers over her pants and then adjusts her glasses, touches a hand to her hair. When her heart rate has steadied, she turns back to Cat, who is watching her with something close to concern. 

Cat lifts her hand. “That will be all today, then, Kiera.”

She looks like she understands—she’s not going to hold this against Kara, at least—and if she’s disappointed she’s hiding it well this time. But she has made a gesture for them, has let her guard down, and Kara isn’t leaving without answering it in kind. She dredges up her Supergirl courage and sets her shoulders. 

“I was going to stay,” she says, and watching Cat’s eyes widen ever so slightly is wonderfully satisfying. “But I have to deal with this.”

Cat nods. “Is everything alright?”

“Nothing I can’t handle, Miss Grant.”

“Mm. I dare say there isn’t much you can’t handle.” 

Kara smiles at her and Cat smiles back and it’s a few long moments before she remembers— _Non_ , she jerks back to herself, shakes her head, and takes a step backwards. There is something fond about the set of Cat’s lips and Kara can feel her eyes on her until she steps into the elevator. 

//

Alex is leaning against her fridge, scowling at Non, when Kara steps in. 

“Kara,” Alex starts when she sees her little sister but Kara shakes her head.

“I have to.”

Alex stares at her for a long time and then she says, “I’ll be here when you’re done.”

A relieved smile breaks over Kara’s face and she nods. Then she turns to Non. “Well?” She doesn’t like the way he looks at Alex—calculating, grim, like she’s an _obstacle_ —and she steps in between them. If anything, that set his face into sterner lines but he just hurls himself out her window and she follows. 

She does what she must.

There are rites—most are spoken words that sit lightly in her mouth, the language of her home springing from her naturally feeling clean and fresh and smooth. There is no hesitation, and the realisation that she still carries _this_ , at least, makes tears well in her eyes. She is crying for Astra, but she is crying for them all and for Krypton and for herself because _they_ never got these rites, she hadn’t really even thought of it, and she was young and certainly not the Lady of the house and there was no one to witness but now…now there is. 

Some of the rites are sung. The men hanging around her wait for her to begin before they softly join her, some voices low and some surprisingly high and sweet and soft. They are her enemies but they are also her blood and she holds no real hate for them, she realises. There is just a heavy, heavy sadness sitting cold and immovable in her gut because one of them—sooner, she thinks, rather than later—will lose. She swallows that back—that fear, that _sorrow—_ and lifts her chin and pushes her voice up to the sky and it might just be her imagination but she hopes that the stars are shining that small part brighter. 

Finally, they light the lanterns and send them high into the sky. 

Non holds the last in his hands. He will fly it higher than the others and light it and he will say the final rites, as befits a bonded pair, and then Astra’s last journey begins and the last week of mourning begins with it. 

Kara hesitates before she flies to his side. She joins him looking up at the lanterns scattered across the night sky, tiny tiny lights against that immense darkness, and she doesn’t touch him—she can’t bring herself to do that—but she allows herself to be gentle when she says, “Thank you for observing her passage, Non.”

“Did you think I would let her be lost?” he says back, barely holding back from snapping at her. 

“No. I didn’t.”

He looks at her then and manages a stiff nod. “We may not have been a marriage for love as your humans do, but there was not a day that passed that she was not strong and brave and true to her cause. The world is less,” he tells her, with no small amount of pain, “for her loss.”

“I feel it too,” Kara says after a moment of considering his words. 

“We have a gift for you.” His hands clench and his jaw works with discomfort but finally he nods and his second in command flies to his side. “Astra was adamant that this war should be won with honour. She would want you to have this.” 

The dark haired Kryptonian hands a dark package over to her and, knowing what it is, Kara swallows hard against more tears. 

“Thank you.”

“Astra was right. You are stronger than you seem. If it should be that _you_ win,” Non says, “I would ask that you perform our rites. Should I not have killed you by that point. And I,” he presses his lip together then continues. “I am your family, if not by blood, and I will send off your coffin when you are dead.”

“My rites will be led by my cousin,” she corrects him and she sees neither relief nor disappointment in his eyes. “But I would ask that you be there.” Non bows his head. “And you’re wrong,” she says as she prepares to leave. “Blood binds us all.”

She’s tired when she leaves him there. There are prayers she must say alone, lift up to the endless sky and the stars and the stars beyond those stars and those in the furthest reaches too, and there will be a short period where she must talk to Astra and guide her through what is beyond—a kind voice to lead her home. 

Trying to remember the words—she heard them twice, first when her mother’s mother had died but Kara had been very young then, and again when her eldest distant cousin had been killed—she lets her instincts fly her home. 

She can barely keep her eyes open as well as free of tears so finally she doesn’t bother fighting it.

She’s so tired of fighting.

She can feel herself being _pulled._ In all these directions, all at once. 

She’s Kara Danvers, with her duty to her sister—a sister who disapproves of her choices, who is acting _so_ strangely, who has been her strength and comfort in the most confusing moments of her life and it hurts now, that she is making herself distant. And she’s Kiera too, keeping up this facade at work that gets harder and harder by the day because Cat keeps switching between impersonal (and a little mean) and this intensity that makes Kara feel like she is struggling through thick, sweet fog to get to her, and this third…. _thing_. A third attitude, she supposes it could be called. It’s the rarest, very rare, but when Cat looks at her just so, Kara feels her skin _burn_. That one is the most terrifying—it’s a looming threat of burning down, the taste of ash in her mouth, a curling licking fear like that first gentle spark that starts the fire that burns it all, burns her, down to nothing at all. 

When she dreams of fire, it is instant and red and blisters a whole world to nothing and as soon as it begins, it ends, taking everything with it. 

If she is honest with herself, and she’s very good at being honest with others but not always with herself, it is that fire that she is afraid of. 

But when Cat looks at her…it’s white and so hot it barely feels like pain at all and there is no end in sight. 

Kara thinks of Cat’s fingers curling around her wrist, touching ever so lightly on her elbow. Then, she forces herself to _stop_ thinking about the way it feels, and those thoughts that come after, like what would it feel like if those fingers curled around her knee instead. Or her shoulder. Or her throat. She stops in the sky and sucks in a breath and, with the strength of a hero, forces herself to stop thinking of Cat. 

She is Supergirl. Supergirl, with a heavier duty, perhaps, than everyone else that Kara manages to be combined. A duty to everyone in the city—to the DEO, too, and all those people who count on her and care for her. A duty to CatCo. To Carter. To Cat—

She is Kara Zor-el, with the memories of all her people, her planet, her _family_. With their name and legacy that she literally straps to her chest every day and it has never felt so heavy before, dragging at her. Kara Zor-el, whose chest opens up into a bottomless pit because Non may be overseeing the period of mourning but there are other duties, not _necessary_ but ones that should be seen to nonetheless because it is right and good to protect your family. And those fall to Kara Zor-el, the last of her name. 

All these parts of her are clashing, clamouring to be heard, _demanding_ to be heard and each time she slips up, each time she reveals something of herself that someone isn’t used to seeing, each time these neatly placed tiles—this mosaic, she thinks, and nearly laughs because what a pretty picture she makes, all in shards—slip up and over one another, it gets worse.

Alex grows more distant each time she mentions that she misses her aunt.

Cat, who fluctuates _wildly_ between hot and chilly—because Cat Grant doesn’t deal in cliches, not hot and cold not for her, she musters up a cool, cool chill, icy and so very purposeful—sharpens her gaze each and every time she slips, and whomever said that pen beat sword should meet Cat because she could prove that, Kara thinks. 

And Kara, she’s just…

She’s so tired. _All_ the _time_. 

But it’s alright, because she sort of registers that she’s floating in through her window and her couch catches her when she falls and she pulls her knees up to her chest and buries her face into them, hands pressed hard against her ears—she _can’t,_ she can’t _bear_ to hear Non begin the rites, she can’t bear to hear the sounds of a city constantly in some flux of chaos, no more cries for help—and she cries hot, wretched tears for her aunt. 

Alex is sleeping in her bed. She can hear her, even with her powers turned right down and her hands clamped over her ears she knows that Alex is there. She knows that steady heart. 

For the first time in a long time, it doesn’t soothe her as well as it has and she continues to cry and she doesn’t move at all to wake Alex. 

A voice Kara doesn’t recognise—soft and strong at the same time, and so incredibly gentle—speaks inside her head, in a small secret place in her mind. 

_El mayara_ , they say, voice laced with empathic pain. _Kara, strong one, brave Kara, el mayara._

//

She has long since dried her tears when she finds herself hovering just off the balcony of Cat’s office.

The other woman should have gone home a long time ago—it is just pushing onto eleven and Kara wonders why she’s still there. She knows that Carter is with his dad, but she also knows that Cat _likes_ being at home, surrounded by the things she likes and the home she has built. So Kara doesn’t know why Cat remains behind, only her office lit up—and Kara, a stupid stupid moth to the flame—and Cat, pouring over some paper or another. 

It doesn’t take her long to notice her, and only a little longer for Cat to join her. 

“Supergirl.”

Kara’s stomach twists with discomfort. She should have gone somewhere else—she should have gone to Alex or James or Winn or, hell, even _Lucy_ , even though she is new and a little unsure she has a strong, good heart and Kara knows that Lucy is on her side. 

But here she is and, with the little voice urging her on with a near constant repetition of _el mayara_ and some other, fainter words she doesn’t quite recognise but their importance settles in her like the distant tolling of a bell, calling her. She has to trust that something inside her knows this is the right place. 

“Supergirl?”

Still, Kara floats a little further away. 

Cat tilts her face toward her and, as Kara watches, she holds her hand out and up to Supergirl. An offer. 

_Come here_.

It’s a soft open palm, a welcoming and considered gesture, and Cat’s eyes are gentle. Kara can’t resist. Kara doesn’t _want_ to resist. 

She lands on the balcony with none of her usual grace. Landing well takes effort, apparently, and there isn’t much left in her. Her hero pose too, crossed arms and strong shoulders, doesn’t feel right. A little lacklustre, for one, but it’s also exhausting and a barrier—and she’s only protecting herself right now. 

Kara lets her head fall forward after a beat in which they just look at one another. 

Her hair slips out from behind her ears and falls in a curtain in front of her and she unfolds her arms slowly and leans backwards against the railing. She keeps her arms crossed, though they droop somewhat until they’re across her stomach and she’s very aware, though from a distance like all her thoughts are crossing the fog in her mind as a light from a lighthouse, that Cat won’t—can’t—mistake this for anything other than nervous.

Scared. 

Cat Grant could burn her hollow and Kara couldn’t stop her right now. Maybe she wouldn’t even try. 

“Something has happened,” Cat says. Kara gives her some small shrug in place of a yes. “And you came here?” There is a slight twinge of discomfort in her right knee—that’s worrying, that she can feel that ache, she should be worried about that—and Kara shifts her weight more evenly on her legs. “Do you feel safe here?” Cat asks her. 

Kara considers the question. She feels _something_ for the place—she had made it her second home, once upon a time and for a long time. But lately, that had been shaken at the roots. 

“Sometimes,” Kara tells her. She doesn’t have the energy to lie. 

“Sometimes,” Cat repeats. 

She takes a step forward and seems pleased when Kara doesn’t shift. At all. When she’s a foot away, Cat reaches out and lays a hand on Kara’s arm, just above her elbow. She does so slowly and Kara doesn’t startle. If anything, her eyes close a little more and she sags a little and lets her elbow rest more heavily into Cat’s hold, because the warm settles neatly and softly, then with more pressure, and it’s just…it’s nice. To be touched. To be held, even so slightly. “Will you stay?”

“For a while.”

“And then?”

Kara bares her teeth. She hopes it’s a smile. “Back to work.”

Cat hums and presses her hand against her and Kara follows the unspoken command, moving with it. She is escorted to one of the chairs on the balcony and she sits. When Cat takes her hand away, Kara hesitates for a moment but, realising that Cat knows she is weak and vulnerable at the moment she thinks she can do no more harm to her reputation if she brings her knees up to her chest. So she does, and Cat watches her and then settles into the chair opposite. 

Cat doesn’t speak and Kara looks away, up at the moon—it’s a waning sickle and sickly wan—and it is a pleasant enough way to pass the time. 

Eventually, Cat interrupts the silence. 

“Would you like a drink?” She taps a finger lightly against her own glass and Kara drags her eyes there to the amber liquid that remains. 

Kara tries to remember if that was one of the rites on Krypton, a drink for the dead. She decides she doesn’t care. 

“Please,” Kara agrees with a nod, and Cat arches an eyebrow but she stands and moves inside and fills her own glass and one for Kara. “Thank you.”

“Of course.”

Kara sips at it slowly. Cat watches her. She knows that the other woman sees the quick words— _nourishment, company, peace_ —she sends to Astra, small prayers, but Kara can’t bring herself to care. 

When their drinks are half gone, Kara is next to speak. 

“Carter?”

“With his father.”

“Ah.”

“That doesn’t surprise you?”

Kara smiles. “I’ve been on earth long enough to know what shared custody is, Miss Grant.” It feels the height of normal to sit here with Cat, drinking and chatting. 

“Exactly how long might that be? Any comment on your real age?” Cat says teasingly, smiling over the lip of her glass, and she looks faintly pleased when Kara laughs. “No? Your day job then. Celebrity crush?”

“Miss Grant,” Kara smiles. “No.”

“Hmm. A pity.” Cat lifts her shoulders in a delicate shrug. “Supergirl—may I call you El?” She remembers Carter telling her excitedly what Supergirl had said he could call her, how she had said the name with hesitation and something like reverence, and Cat’s breath almost blocks up in her chest with anticipation. It fades when she looks at Supergirl’s considering face—she’s going to say no, Cat realises.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” she says.

Cat knew she would say something like that. But… “Why?”

Cat looks away, down into her glass, and Kara registers that she’s hurt. 

“Because it’s not my name,” she tells Cat. “When you call me something, I would like it to be my real name.” Cat looks up again and their eyes meet and Kara drops her chin onto her kneecap and blinks slowly over at her. 

Cat nods. “I would like that as well.”

They fall into yet another silence and Kara’s eyes drift closed and she feels nothing but calm as she sits there with Cat. Her heart rate slows, her fingers loosen a little from where they are looped around her legs. 

“What do you need?” Cat asks, so quietly, breathes out really, and Kara’s eyelids feel heavy as she forces them open. “Why did you come to me?”

Kara doesn’t have an answer for that. She doesn’t fully know. 

“What do you _want_?”

Kara is afraid that she will say something stupid. Something like, to be here. By your side. To be enough. To be good. To be, just for a little while, quiet and still and cared for. 

Something of her thoughts must show on her face because Cat sends her a thoughtful, questioning look that lasts for a very long time and then she nods slowly. 

“Well, Supergirl, you’ve been here long enough to know about shared custody. What else?”

Kara blinks. “What?”

“What else do you know about earth? Do you have a favourite film?”

“I—I, yes,” she says, thrown off balance. “I do.” Cat raises an impatient eyebrow. “Amelié.”

“Really.”

“It’s beautiful,” Kara argues—Cat didn’t seem dismissive, but neither did she seem particularly interested. “She’s beautiful, and it’s funny.”

“I wasn’t criticising, Supergirl. I just haven’t seen it.”

“Oh.” Kara’s hands loosen a little more and one of her knees drops down. The other remains upright, propping up her chin. “You should. Carter would like it, I think.”

“Hmm. And music?”

“All kinds.” Kara frowns. “Why are you asking me these things?”

“What about your hobbies?”

“I fight crime in my spare time.” Cat doesn’t look impressed. “I paint,” Kara whispers, and Cat’s expression lightens when she remembers the canvas that hangs in the pride of place in Carter’s bedroom. 

“Favourite book?”

“These don’t feel like things that will go into your magazine, Miss Grant.”

“Is that a foreign book? I don’t recognise it,” Cat jokes in a flat tone and, when Kara smiles a little, Cat rolls her eyes. “Call it personal investigation. Maybe I’ll write an up close and personal with National City’s hero.”

“Another one?”

“The first was a little rushed.”

Kara shrugs. “They’ll want their money back.”

“It’ll be too late.” Cat’s grin is shark sharp and wicked and Kara is surprised enough by it that she laughs. “There’s my Supergirl,” the other woman murmurs, wholly affectionate, and Kara feels awareness slam back into her chest. It feels like she’s swallowed a Kryptonite rock and it got lodged somewhere on the way down to her stomach, just between her collarbones, and she unfolds her legs slowly and plants her feet on the ground and grips the edge of the chair cushion. 

“I have to go.”

Cat frowns, shifts forward in her seat too. “Must you? You won’t stay?”

Kara stands. “I can’t.”

“Please?” Cat pushes quickly up onto her feet. She advances on Kara—not angry, or aggressive, but there is a power in her walk as always—and with the chair pressing against her back, it feels so much—too much—like the moment she had shared with Cat her Cat’s apartment. 

Kara uses a touch of superspeed to stand, but then Cat’s hand is on her arm and she freezes. 

There is a dark and greedy corner of her mind that swallows up great chucks of her at a time and spits it out again, drenched in thoughts like, _Don’t you like the way she looks at you? Don’t you want her to look at you the way she looks at Supergirl, like she wants to feel those strong hands against her, like she wants to feel how much pressure she can use until you bend or break?_ And there are the softer thoughts like melted chocolate, sweet and dark and hard to resist, that whisper to her. _Don’t you like it when she looks at you like you’re powerful? You’re her equal. You are powerful and lovely and good. Can’t you see that’s how she looks at you?_ And, lighter still, _worship her, don’t you want to see her face when she realises the power she has over you, don’t you want to burn alive for her pleasure?_

“ _Stay_ ,” a voice insists, and it takes a moment for Kara to realise that it is Cat. 

“I have to go,” she says again, and this time she says it as Kara. Not Kiera, not Supergirl. 

There is something happening between them—it’s absolutely undeniable now—and Kara, rather than confused, feels settled by what has happened tonight. 

Cat is going to realise who she is one of these days, and when it happens, Kara decides, she isn’t going to give in. It’ll be Cat’s turn, she thinks. It’ll be _Cat’s_ turn to give. She’s very, very good at taking, which Kara doesn’t mind—she likes helping, she does, but she’s aware that she doesn’t have all that much left to give. 

She can’t say any of that without giving it all away but she does what she can. 

She lays her hand over Cat’s and peels it away slowly. Then, she says, “Give my best to Carter,” and, “I had a lovely time with him the other night.” Cat purses her lips, clearly disappointed. “Goodnight, Miss Grant.”

The urge to touch her increases the longer she stays, so she makes herself step away. 

“Goodnight.” Cat hesitates and then Kara has propelled herself into the night. She is flying away when she hears Cat’s very quiet addition. “Supergirl.”


	9. Chapter 9

“Where were you last night?”

Kara freezes at the question and a neat foot tucks itself behind her boot and _pulls_ and Kara falls, landing heavily on her back. Her breath rushes out in a great gust. 

“ _Ouch_.”

“Don’t be a baby, I barely touched you,” Alex says with a grin. 

“Yeah but the floor did. All over.”

Kara stands slowly, purposefully slowly if she’s honest, because she's not quite sure how to answer Alex. What is she supposed to say? _Hey Alex, sorry I didn’t wake you up after I got back from hanging out with my super evil uncle, I cried for a bit and then I went and hung out with the woman who is my boss and also the person who could ruin my whole life if she wanted to._

That would go over _super_ well, Kara is sure of it.

“What did Non want? Are you okay? Did he try anything?”

“It was just, y’know, funeral stuff,” Kara says with a shrug. It’s more important than just ‘funeral stuff’ but Alex has been weird about the whole Astra being dead thing, more weird than just Kara grieving, so that’s all she says about it. “He didn’t try anything, I just wanted to fly around for a bit. Get my bearings.” Kara crinkles her nose at the lie—it’s a tell and she wavers a bit, waiting for Alex to call her out on it, but she doesn’t. Which is…weird. Again. “Speaking of another evil dude, though, Maxwell Lord gave me a USB.” She ducks a punch and rolls to the side, making her way toward her bag. She pulls out the little stick and holds it out to her sister. 

“What?” 

“Yeah. It’s either nothing, a virus, or something can actually help us, right? Oh, and Non gave me one of the anti-Kryptonite suits so I was hoping you could—“

“You _met_ with _Lord_? Without backup?”

“No. Do you think I’m that stupid?” she asks, a little wounded. “He came to CatCo.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid, Kara, I think that you can be a little…impulsive. When it comes to keeping people safe. And I just—”

“Worry.” Kara’s frown splits into a sweet smile and she tilts her head. “I know you do. You _know_ I’m a superhero, right?”

“With an ego, apparently.”

“I’m getting there.”

“Speaking of egos,” Alex says, her voice hardening again. “Maxwell Lord. I told him if he put your identity in jeopardy I would have words with him.” She wraps her hand into a tight fist and her jaw clenches. “He went to CatCo? What did he want?”

“To offer me a job. And he gave me that,” Kara points unnecessarily to the USB Alex holds. 

“What did he say? Exactly?”

“Alex,”

“ _Exactly_ , Kara.”

“I can write out a transcript if you want, but he didn’t say anything important. He just offered me a job and was generally creepy. That’s all. And then he gave me this and said it was for my eyes only.”

“Is it a weapon, do you think?”

“I don’t know, computers aren’t really my thing. Maybe we should get Winn on it?”

“Maybe,” Alex agrees quietly. She’s standing tall, feet slightly spread and shoulders back, _glaring_ at the USB, and the feeling that something is actually wrong sweeps over Kara again. “If this is an attack, or a trick, I’m going to hurt him,” Alex says with no small amount of promise and Kara snags her wrist. 

“Hey. It’s okay, we’ll figure out what it is and if it’s something bad, we’ll save the day. And my identity is still safe, Cat just thinks he was sexually harassing me. I _think_ she actually plans to sue him,” Kara laughs sweetly, but it fades when Alex just looks at her with dark eyes. “Okay, not funny?” She reaches up to adjust her non-existent glasses. “Check out the USB and if it’s something nefarious, _then_ we can kick his butt. Okay?”

“There will be no we,” Alex growls. “I will drag him all the way here, tied to the back of my car if I have to.” Her free hand closes into a fist again and Kara pats her shoulder. 

“Whoa there, try not to sound like you’re looking forward to it _too_ much.”

“Oh but I am.” Alex sucks in a calming breath. It doesn’t work. “I want to punch him in his stupid, smug face. I want to lock him away and I want him to never see daylight again. I want—” She bites down on her next words, but there’s no point. Kara is already looking at her with worry. There’s something in her sister’s voice, a sliver of something dark—Alex has always, _always_ been ready to fight, but for as long as Kara can remember Alex has always fought to defend someone. Kara, their mother, their father, Alex’s friends, country, planet. But this, this is something else. 

“Alex, are you okay? You’re not acting like yourself. You’re…” Kara reaches out slowly and takes Alex’s other hand. She throws the USB back onto her bag and squeezes Alex’s hand. “Something’s wrong. Something’s been wrong for a while.” Alex won’t look at her and Kara is afraid that it’s because it’s her, because there is something wrong between _them_ , but she forces herself to relax. “What is it?” she decides to ask, instead of assuming. 

“I’m so angry,” Alex tells her quietly, but she won’t look at her. “I’m so angry that he would try to hurt you and that he can just, just get _away with it_ ,” she says in a low growl. 

Kara waits for her to continue and when she doesn’t, she says, “But that’s not everything.”

Alex’s hands close almost painfully tight on Kara’s—a pain, a presence she can actually feel, thanks to the Kryptonite emitters. She waits until Alex meets her eyes. It’s a long time coming and, when she finally does, her eyes aren’t angry anymore. Worse, it looks like she’s _drowning_ in something that looks a lot like guilt. 

“Alex?” 

“I am so sorry,” Alex starts, and she pulls her hands from Kara’s and backs away a little. When Kara moves to follow her, Alex puts a hand between them, stopping her. “No, please. Don’t?”

“Okay. Okay, but I’m right here. It’s _alright_ , whatever it is,” she assures her and she means it. But when Alex lifts that hand, fingers curled just a little in the effort to keep it from shaking, and brushes away a few errant tears, Kara isn’t so sure that it will be okay. 

“I want to protect you from everything,” she says.

"I know you do."  


“Kara, please,” Alex asks of her, quietly but with a hint of desperation. “Please, just let me say it. I can’t, I don’t think I’ll be able to finish if you keep interrupting.” Kara opens her mouth to agree but, thinking better of it, snaps her mouth shut and nods. Alex looks up and just to the left of her, eyes a little distant and stern. “I want to protect you from everything. You’re my little sister and I never want to see you hurt. And it’s easy to be _angry,”_ she tells Kara very gently, softening the word because if she said it the way she wanted to, it wouldn’t be anger it would be something violent and bloody like fury like pain like _wrath_. “It’s easier to be angry and to stop other people from hurting you than to sit here useless and guilty.”

“But why would you—” Kara flushes. “Sorry.”

Alex sends her a fond little smile that falters before it begins. “When you saw Astra on the ground, you looked devastated,” she tells Kara, voice thick. “You loved her.” Kara nods. “I saw you, I saw the way you looked when you landed, and then you knelt next to her and you told her that she was _there_ and I know, Kara, she’s your family, your real family, and you love her.” She sniffs and lifts her sleeve to her eyes. “I didn’t know how to tell you,” she whispers. 

“Alex?” Kara asks quietly. The tips of her fingers feel numb. 

“Hank didn’t kill Astra.” Alex says it very quietly. Her voice is unsteady, keeping from cracking. It’s nothing anything Kara has ever heard from Alex before. She doesn’t like it, she doesn’t trust how she’s feeling right now—unsteady, so nervous, dread bubbling away inside her. Kara turns away, just a little. She tries not to hear the faint sob Alex lets out when she does. “He took the blame, he didn’t want. He didn’t want you to hate me.”

“No,” Kara breathes. 

“He saw your face and he didn’t want this to come between us, I’m so sorry, he didn’t want us to lose each other. I didn’t know what to do, Kara, I didn’t know what to say. I saw your face and Hank, he lied to you because he didn’t want you to get hurt and _god_ , he knew I couldn’t lose you, Kara. You’re my _sister_ ,” she says, with a raw edge to her voice that sounds a lot like fear. Alex swallows. “Hank was on his knees. Astra had a knife and she was about to kill him. There was nothing he could do. But I had my sword and—”

“No.”

“It was me. I killed her. I killed Astra.”

Kara stares blankly at the wall—she runs through every minute she’s spent with Alex since that night, re-examines it, steps back from herself as she thinks it through.

“Kara _please_ ,” she can hear her sister say, but she sounds very faint like she is a great distance away. “Kara, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want you to hate me. It hurt so much, not telling you, Kara I am so sorry. Please,” she says again and she’s crying in earnest now and sinks down into a crouch, back against the wall. She lowers her head into her hands and doesn’t bother to temper her tears anymore. 

Kara considers every look, every hesitant touch, every strange thing Alex had said. Every hug that held on a touch too long. 

She steps away from Alex—Alex who just hangs her head a little more, _sobs_ —and she reaches her hand up to the panel on the wall. Very carefully, bit by bit, she pushes the Kryptonite emitters up so that they’re a little stronger than normal and when she turns back around, Alex is watching her with wide eyes. 

“Kara, what—”

Strength leeched from her body, Kara crosses the distance between them in four long strides and wraps her arms around her sister tightly, knowing that she can’t possibly hurt her. She feels the harsh way Alex hugs her back, pulls her hard into her chest and drops her head with a solid thud onto Kara’s shoulder, and when she begins to cry again, Kara holds all the more tightly to her. 

* * *

Cat is…concerned.

About Kara. 

Something isn’t right, and she can’t quite get her multi-award winning brain to grasp what it is that is amiss. 

Cat had sent Kara on an impossible coffee run fifteen minutes ago—some concoction she’d caught wind of from some reputable source, it’s supposed to be all fair trade and fine taste and _highly_ exclusive, three store fronts in America exclusive, none of which were in National City exclusive—and naturally, her assistant had pulled through and had returned with the coffee as well as a bag of the beans for her home machine, a treat for Carter, her prescription glasses that she’d broken fixed and looking better than before, the layouts she wanted, _and_ a contract Lane Junior had evidently given Kara on her way to Cat’s office. 

“Miss Grant, your coffee.”

“Is it hot?”

“Of course, Miss Grant.”

Cat lifts her eyes from her computer and squints at her assistant, suspicious. What was that she can hear? Was that a _teasing_ note in Kara’s voice? Kara smiles innocently back at her and Cat decides that she doesn’t care—teasing is far preferable to that irritatingly _pleasant_ expression Kara had plastered to her face 24/7. This, at least, was genuine. 

“Hmm.” She waves her hand and Kara lowers her coffee down onto a coaster. 

“I took the liberty of picking you up something to eat, just a light snack, I know that you had a meeting with the art department and you get a bit peckish when they’ve been…less than exemplary.”

“The word you’re looking for is disastrous, Kiera. And I don’t get peckish.”

“Yes you do, Miss Grant. You pace back and forth in that room and it’s exhausting for everyone involved so you will eat your snack while you will look over _this,_ ” Kara near orders her, placing a thick contract onto Cat’s desk, “and when you’re done I will take the plate.”

“My my, Kiera. A little brash.”

Kara adjusts her glasses with a pleased little smile. “Just looking out for you.”

“Hmm.”

“Oh,” she says as she leaves, “The Peterson contract, I was going to tell you, umm.” She twists her hands a little and then hurries back over to Cat, who nods lazily as she bites into the little treat Kara had brought her. “I, uh, I took the liberty—”

“ _Another_ liberty, Kiera? How bold.”

“Of putting some tabs in places where the wording is a bit,” she pauses, considering, and her nose crinkles. “Iffy.”

“Iffy?”

“Dubious, Miss Grant. Not in your favour.”

“Better.” Cat pulls the contract toward her, noting that the tabs are littered throughout the document. “When did you have a chance to read this? Lane only finished it this morning.”

“Um.” Kara looks down at the contract—all 303 pages of it—and her hand lifts very slowly to her glasses. “Well, ah,”

Cat rolls her eyes. “Oh don’t bother. I don’t have the time or patience for babbling,” she says and she stands to make herself a drink. “I’ll thank you for the foresight if your notes actually prove to be helpful.”

“That’s not necessary. Just,” Kara shrugs, “doing my job, Miss Grant.”

“Hmm,” Cat says again, and that feeling comes over her again, the one that whispers that something isn’t quite right. Kara waits for Cat to dismiss her, and she straightens the items on Cat’s desk as she waits, which is entirely unnecessary, and she’s not making eye contact and her smile is so firmly in place and Cat narrows her eyes. 

Her smile, she thinks. Oh, it’s still there and it’s real enough. Sunny Danvers, beaming away and lighting up the world around her. But there’s something to the way Kara is going out of her way to be helpful, that she hasn’t sat still at all today, something to the way her eyes look a little washed out and her hands, closed over her stomach and fingers twisting together.

“What’s wrong?” Cat asks. 

She wonders, for a moment, if Kara has been waiting for that. Cat is the one who put the barrier between them after all—it stands to reason that Cat needed to be the one to wipe it away, to step over it. To hold out her hand, this time. 

“Oh no, Miss Grant, nothing. Can I get you anything else?”

Cat knows she’s struck on something—Kara hadn’t thought that she would notice, obviously, because her eyes opened comically wide and honestly, Cat sometimes thinks that there is no way that Kara could _possibly_ be Supergirl because the effort it would take for someone as open as Kara to keep that hidden would be phenomenal. She knows she’s struck on something, because Kara swallows and her smile droops a little and her shoulders hunch forward a touch more. 

She lets it go. “No, Kiera, I need the fashion layouts twenty minutes ago. Chop chop.”

“Yes, Miss Grant,” her assistant says with a frankly appalling amount of gratitude, and Cat just hopes that at the end of the day—the literal end of day—Kara will come back to her and, maybe, let her help. 

//

Kara performs seven more minor miracles before the close of day. One of them, Cat had just quietly mentioned to Lane that there were some files she needed to collect before the meeting began—and of course, it’s good thinking for the presenters to have made doubles but of _course_ they won’t have and Cat has never come to a meeting unprepared before and she isn’t about to start now—when Kara shows up, a gentle touch to Cat’s elbow and an “excuse me, Miss Grant? The files for your three o’clock, they were on your desk, I thought you might want them,” and she hands them over with an utterly guileless smile that Cat doesn’t believe for half a second. 

Although. It _is_ still possible that Kara is just an exceptional assistant. 

An assistant who is working far too hard and ensuring that everything is perfect, a trait Cat would enjoy immensely if it weren’t so painfully obvious that Kara is doing it because she’s trying to distract herself. 

When five o’clock comes around, Kara doesn’t leave her desk and she doesn’t ask Cat if she needs anything because if she doesn’t need anything, Kara has no excuse to stay.

The clock ticks over to half past, and then six, and then half six, and Cat lowers the contract she’s been looking over and says, “Kiera,” very quietly and waits for the click of Kara’s shoes. “Bring your device in here, I have some emails to dictate while I’m reading this.”

“Yes, Miss Grant.”

She already has her tablet in hand, of course she does, and she settles into the desk chair and poses her hands on the keyboard. Kara looks up expectantly when Cat doesn’t speak immediately. 

“You were right about the contract, Kiera,” she says, and Kara is done typing it before she really realises what Cat has said. Her cheeks blush a light pink and Cat smiles, amused. “Email, Lane Junior. Subject line, mm.” She waves a hand. “Your cheekbones are wonderfully sharp but your work just doesn’t cut it.”

Kara snorts a little and obediently types out the phrase. 

“Body of the email. Lane. Sending you back the contract. PA marked some sections for review. My notes added.” Kara pauses. “End stop, Kiera, put my signature at the end if you want to. Send. Next email. Witt, computer hobbit.”

“Winn, Miss Grant.” Cat spares her a glare and Kara ducks her head. “Sorry.”

“Mhm. _Witt_ ,” she says more sharply. “Computer hobbit. Subject line. Fired.”

“ _What_?”

“Oh relax, Kiera, I’m not going to fire him. It’ll just make sure that he reads it first thing. Write it. Body of email. Wilt. Lose the cardigans, it’s summer and if I have to turn the air-conditioning off to smoke you out of your woolen natural habit I will. Third screen in my office is broken, fix it.” Cat waits a moment for Kara to nod. “There’s one for the Peterson team as well but I have to draft that. What a mess.”

“Do you need any help with it?”

“Mm. No.” Kara nods and waits for her next job. “Coffee, please. And get one for yourself as well.” She looks down at the contract again and pretends that the _please_ meant nothing at all, and when she looks up, Kara has gone to fetch it for her. 

Kara returns with a piping hot latte soon but not that soon. It takes her longer than it had in the middle of the lunch rush, which means that Kara either dawdled— _unacceptable_ —or she had called someone, shocked and confused, when her ungrateful boss had said _please_. 

Cat has moved to the couch now and Kara collects a coaster from the little box and places her coffee down at the edge. 

“Your coffee, Miss Grant.”

“Thank you,” she says, shocking her assistant again. “Would you like to sit?”

“Oh, umm.” Kara fiddles with her own coffee for a moment before she drops into the seat near Cat. “Thank you?”

“Do you have any work to do?”

“Umm.”

“Kara, it really is _quite_ obvious that you don’t want to leave,” Cat says, looking at her assistant over her glasses. “If you don’t have any work, I will give you some more.”

“No,” Kara admits, nodding. “I finished it all.”

“Print off the Sports section submission. I find it terribly dull and I’d rather spend as little time as possible reading the crud they send me first time. Edit it.”

“Yes, Miss Grant.”

“You may work here, if you would like.”

“I would,” Kara beams, and she returns quickly with a stack of papers—it looks like more than just the Sports section but if Kara wants to work harder, Cat won’t _stop_ her. 

They work in silence together for a while. Cat has her send three more emails—threats of severance on the horizon and Kara doesn’t temper her emails with niceness because they really are _dreadful_ and the emails seem almost tame and kind in comparison to what Cat wants to say—and Kara has to scrap an entire column because it’s almost word for word exactly what they had written for the last months basketball feature, just with the names changed and a different anecdote thrown in, and she wants to write something cutting like Cat would but she stops herself. 

“Would you like to use the red pen?” Cat asks, teasingly, and Kara rubs at her forehead hard. 

“Has everyone always been _stupid_?”

“Oh yes, absolutely. You haven’t even begun to see the extent of it.”

“This is just, just _plagiarism_ ,” Kara says, throwing it down onto the desk and she shakes her head hard. “Self plagiarism but still. They could at least try.”

Cat picks up the article. Kara had made it halfway through, making a few changes here and there, before she had given up and just drawn a large cross through the entire thing. _Not good enough_ , was written neatly at the bottom and Cat had to agree. 

“He’s tried to pull this a few times before. I think it’s time we had a little chat. Schedule a meeting tomorrow. Nine a.m.” She doesn’t miss the way Kara presses her lips together to stop a smile—she imagines that her assistant is thinking about the way the columnist will panic when he sees the appointment. “Make sure Lane is there.”

“Yes, Miss Grant.”

They fall back into quiet work and then Cat is done. She puts down her pen and takes her glasses off. “So. Kara. Something has happened.” Kara’s hands tighten for a moment. Wondering what the best way to go about it might be, Cat stands and heads over to the bar. She drops an ice cube in her glass. “Would you like to talk about it?” A second ice cube. 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Cat pours her drink and turns, considers the woman in front of her. Shoulders tense, hunched over the work on her lap. “Kara.”

“Everything is fine, Miss Grant. Did I,” Kara’s head jerks up, eyes wide. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No.” Cat sips her drink and, when she makes her way over to Kara and sits down again but closer this time, Kara watches her every movement. “Do you think you can hide from me, Kara? I personally figured out that Kim Kardashian was pregnant even before she knew. You?” Cat shakes her head. “You’re an open book.”

“Miss Grant,”

“Something is bothering you,” Cat says, more genuinely, softly, and she lowers her hand very gently on top of Kara’s. 

When Kara yanks her hand away, scattering papers onto the floor and over the table, Cat doesn’t move. Her hand does, she wraps it around the edge of the couch instead and tries not to think about how very warm and soft Kara’s hand was. She sips at her drink and waits for Kara to settle, to pick up all the papers and to put them all back in order. She ignores Kara’s breathless explanations—none of them are true, or even finished, and they fade away and stop when Cat lifts her eyebrows at her. 

“I’m sorry,” Kara says finally, when everything is neat and she sits still in her place. She lowers her head into her hands and says it again. “I’m sorry.” Cat is about to tell her it’s alright, ask her if she wants to talk about it, but she isn’t sure how to phrase it and by the time she’s decided to just come out and say what she means, brash if she has to be, Kara is speaking again. “You’re right.” She swallows. “Something happened. A lot of somethings, actually, but I thought I had a handle on it and then,” she stops, shakes her head. 

“Tell me,” Cat orders her, gently. 

“I…” Kara lifts her head, a little, and her hands slide down from her forehead to her cheeks. Kara’s eyes are wide and dark and she doesn’t look at Cat but out the wall of windows. “It’s my sister,” she starts. Her eyes drop closed, her forehead furrows. “She did something… _awful_. And I don’t know how to help her.”

Kara is silent for long enough that Cat feels comfortable offering something. “Talk to her, perhaps?”

“I have. I mean, we did. Talk. Sort of.” Kara hunches her shoulders forward. “But I can’t _talk_ to her about it. Not really. And she can’t talk to me, it, it’s not,” she shakes her head, makes a sound in the back of her throat that is annoyance and exasperation and frustration. “I’m sorry.”

Cat drinks again, just enough for the taste of the scotch to run over her tongue and she savours it. She considers what Kara has told her—not much at all—and then she touches Kara’s knee very lightly. When Kara doesn’t pull away this time, she rests her whole hand there. “She hurt _you_ ,” Cat deduces. When Kara tenses, Cat knows she’s right. “And you want to tell her that it’s alright. But it’s not.”

“I guess.” 

They sit for a time. 

“It’s not okay,” Kara whispers through her fingers. “But I understand.” Her hands tighten on her face, knuckles whitening, and Cat wants to pull those hands down and hold them tight so that Kara doesn’t hurt herself, her face, but she doesn’t. “I understand, but it still hurts and it’s stupid because I _know_ why she did it and I _want_ to be okay with it and,” one of Kara’s hands slips down and presses against her chest, her heart, hard. “I don’t know what to do.”

Neither of them say anything for a long moment. Cat waits for Kara to tell her more, but the other woman is so very, very still where she sits and she doesn’t react at all when Cat squeezes her knee. 

“Kara?”

Cat doesn’t allow herself to panic when Kara doesn’t react, still—Carter has done this since he was very young, or something similar, and she knows the distant look in Kara’s eyes and that soon enough it will pass. She wonders if there is anything she can do to make Kara more comfortable—Carter likes his blanket, likes to have something heavy and warm and soft on his lap like a pillow, and he likes a little music—but there isn’t anything she can do now to find out so she decides to talk very quietly until Kara returns, just so she knows that she isn’t alone. 

//

“Kara?” 

There’s something touching her cheek. It’s very soft and very gentle.

“Kara,” that gentle voice whispers again, and the pressure on her cheek increases. It grazes a path up to push a lock of hair behind her ear, and Kara leans the tiniest bit into that pressure. She blinks, brings her vision back from the movement of the stars, which makes her queasy, and focuses until she recognises where she is. Cat’s office. And the person in front of her—who is _kneeling_ in front of her, whose hand is on her skin—and her eyes widen. She meets Cat’s eyes, and the woman is looking at her with no small amount of concern and a little relief. 

“There you are,” she says. “What just happened?”

“What—what do you mean?”

“You zoned out,” is what Cat says, and Kara thinks that’s what Carter must call it because it doesn’t really sound like something that Cat would come up with. 

“Oh. I,” She doesn’t know how to explain, without telling her that she didn’t know what happened, that one moment she was here, talking with Cat, and the next moment she was staring into the spaces between the stars, light spiralling around her. She _can’t_ tell Cat that. Kara’s eyes blur and all she wants to do is lean into the warmth on her cheek, rest against that soft hand. So she does. She tilts her head into Cat’s hand and her eyelids slip closed. A warm breath ghosts out over Cat’s wrist, sending a shiver all the way down her spine. 

“Kara, will you listen to me for a moment?” Kara nods. “Are you hurt?” she asks sharply. This is very unlike Kara and she’s scared—perhaps, before, Kara might have trusted her. With a little push, she might have trusted her enough to let her guard down. But now? After everything Cat has done, it must have been a battering ram that has thrown her back to Cat. And her heart aches for the younger woman. Which is why she finds herself saying, “What do you need?” and she takes the opportunity—it may never come again, she knows—to stroke her thumb ever so lightly against the soft skin of Kara’s cheek. 

“Nothing, Miss Grant. Just this,” Kara says very quietly. 

“Well, Kara, as much as I might like to, I cannot hold this position forever.”

“Oh.” Kara wrenches her eyes open and she looks privately distraught when Cat pulls her hand away. “Of course, Miss Grant, I’ll just—“ That hand drops to cover hers in her lap and Kara freezes. “Miss Grant?”

“What do you need?” she asks again.

“I’m tired,” Kara says instead of answering, and Cat wonders for a moment how long it has been since Kara asked for something. 

“Alright.” Cat stands and, when Kara tries to stand, she lays a hand on her shoulder and _presses_ , just lightly, and watches as Kara allows herself to be held down. “Do you need to call anyone?” she asks and she picks up Kara’s phone from the coffee table. 

“Call anyone?”

“You’ll be staying with me tonight. And Carter.”

“Oh.” Kara blinks. She starts to nod and then stops. “Miss Grant, that’s not professional.” It’s not a reprimand—if anything, it’s a reminder. It hurts her that Cat did this to them, Cat _knows_ that it does, and still she helps Cat maintain it.

Cat’s eyes flicker over every inch of Kara’s face. “I know,” she admits. “That never really took with us though, did it? I wasn’t professional, I was vindictive,” she says, and Kara doesn’t disagree. “I have…made some mistakes lately, Kara. I would like the opportunity to fix them. If that would be alright.”

Kara won’t say yes. Cat can see that in the way Kara’s lips flatten into a tense line. She feels a small rush of pride for the other woman. Cat can admit that she has been rather horrid, and she’s glad that Kara is holding her own. Everything that had been so _infuriating_ lately—the too pleasant smile, the way Kara refused to be affected by all the small, sly digs, the way her work never dipped below exceptional—suddenly wasn’t infuriating anymore but wonderful and Cat refuses to take credit for it. Oh, she has mentored Kara and she has told her to be confident and calm and collected and to work hard, but this? _Demanding_ respect? Even tired, even though she might be, as Cat expects, heart-broken from whatever has happened with her sister, Kara demands respect and this is something that Kara has done for herself. Cat gives her a tiny, proud little nod. 

“Carter will be thrilled to see you again, naturally,” Cat drawls, falling back into familiar territory. 

Kara leaps for safe ground too—her eyes light up and she nods. “He’s a great kid, Miss Grant. Really great.”

“Yes, I’m aware. How could he not be?” Cat stands, waves a hand at herself. “I _am_ his mother, after all.”

Kara is too tired to stop the way her eyes sweep over Cat and she nods slowly. “Yes, Miss Grant, that’s true.”

“Assuming you don’t need to call anyone, since you avoided the question and you’re having… _trouble_ with your sister,” she says and Kara flushes a little as Cat points out her less than subtle distraction, “you can put away your work in your desk and wait for me. I will be ready to go in twelve minutes. My driver is already waiting downstairs. When we stop at your place, I would like you to pack an overnight bag, and then we will go to the city house. Questions?”

“No, Miss Grant.” It’s a lie—Cat can see that Kara has many questions, and she’s sure that she will ask them when she needs to. 

“Very well. Go.”

“Yes, Miss Grant.”

* * *

Carter  _flings_ himself into Kara’s arms when they arrive.

“ _Kara_.” She hugs him so tight she lifts him clean off the floor. He laughs. “I missed you!”

“I missed you too, buddy.”

“Yes, yes, we all missed each other.” Cat closes the door with a _click_ —the sound ricochets in Kara’s ears and she lets go of Carter, pats his jacket down. She doesn’t want to hurt him and she’s sometimes afraid that if she startles, she’ll grab too tight. “While the hallway has some lovely art, I suggest we move this party into the kitchen, Kiera.”

“Mom, it’s Kara,” Carter chides. He wraps his arms around his moms waist when she steps closer and smiles up at her. “Hi.”

“Hello, Carter.” Cat hugs him close and presses a kiss to the top of his head, eyes slipping closed. She knows he’s quickly reaching the stage where any lingering is creepy and uncool and so she’s very, very quick about smelling his hair—kids shampoo, still, and faintly of laundry powder—and then she turns him and taps him lightly. “Move move. Have you eaten yet?”

“No. It’s only eight,” he quickly defends himself. “I wanted to wait for you! I knew you didn’t have a super long day, I thought we could eat together.” Cat hangs up her coat to hide her smile. “Kara, why do you have a bag? Are you eating with us? Are you _staying_ with us? Is something wrong? How long are you staying for?”

“Oh, umm, I’m not…really sure why I’m here,” Kara says, looks nervously from an unimpressed Cat to an expectant Carter. “Well, that is. I can eat dinner with you? If you want?”

“That would be awesome. But, uh,” Carter scratches at his nose to hide a smile. “She eats a lot so we should cook, like, twice as much. At least. Three?” He spreads his hands. “Maybe four times as much?”

“Carter.”

“No, no it’s okay, he’s right,” Kara interjects when she hears Cat’s warning tone. “I eat a lot. Fast metabolism.”

“Oh to be young again.” Cat tosses her hair back, rolls her eyes. “Fine. Carter, take Kara to the guest room. _Not_ the one we make your grandmother stay in.” She smiles when Carter says _duh_ quietly and again when she sees him take Kara’s hand and drag her away. He’s never usually so tactile. It’s nice. “Get her a towel from the cupboard!”

“ _Duh_ , mom! I’m gonna show her Supergirl’s painting too!”

“I wonder if you’ll show her the Supergirl article you have under your pillow,” she says very quietly, and she hears Kara laugh suddenly and loudly—probably at something Carter said—and she can’t help but smile. Knowing Carter, he and Kara will be standing in front of that painting for a full hour so she takes her time kicking her heels off just inside the door to her bedroom and picking out something to wear. If it takes her a little longer than usual, well. She wants to make the right impression, somewhere between _I’m still your boss_ and _relax, I’m not your boss while I’m at home,_ which is a difficult position to communicate. 

They aren’t back by the time she gets to the kitchen so Cat turns on the oven and peeks into the freezer. She knows that their housekeeper had made something like seven lasagnes a while back for Cat’s lazy nights and they’d barely made a dent in them. Lasagne sounds perfect—she’s seen Kara eat it on occasion and Cat is too tired to even think about making a salad or anything more difficult than that—so she heats up the oven and slips the dish in. After a moments thought, she slips in a second one. If Carter was telling the truth, they might just need it. And if not, well, he can have leftovers for lunch.

Cat pours herself a glass of wine and makes her way to the guest room,which is empty, except for Kara’s bag sitting neatly at the end of the bed—a bag that looks strangely like something Cat recognises as government issue tactical bag. She rolls her eyes and closes the door, continuing on down the hall to Carter’s room. 

She can hear them before she gets there. 

“—had it on that wall, but there was too much light coming in from the window and I didn’t want, like, the colours to fade, yknow?” Kara hums a yes. “So I _thought_ that if I put it on _this_ all I could see it in the morning straight away, which is really cool because it’s really nice and happy to wake up to. I used to have this print that my grandma bought me, but it was really dark and creepy. I think it was supposed to be some artists impression of Edgar Allen Poe. She’s really into the classics and she wants to make sure I’m well-rounded,” Carter says with a distinctly unimpressed tone Cat recognises as something he’s picked up from her at some point. “But it just gave me nightmares.”

“Poe can be pretty dark. One of the scariest things for me was the heart beneath the floor boards. Thump, thumping away.”

“Ew.”

“ _Right_? It’s creepy!”

“Totally. Also, by the way, the light doesn’t affect it as much when it’s on this wall.”

“Well I love it, Carter. I think it looks _great_ there. And it’s so cool, it really comes out when it’s against the blue. It’s like it was made for it.” Cat tilts her head a little. It’s not a strange thing to say, it’s just a comment, but there is this strange satisfaction to the tone like Kara is appreciating the way it’s all come together so neatly, the wall and the painting and the colours, and Cat wonders. 

Cat leans against the door frame and looks in at them. They have their backs to her, looking at the opposite wall where Supergirl’s painting hangs, and Cat can’t ignore the picture they make. Both with their arms crossed, heads tilted just so to the side. Kara tilts her head a little more and twists a bit to smile down at Carter.

“It’s hung really well. A great height. Did you do that?”

“Dad helped but I chose where to put it.”

Kara nods. “Nice job. And you’re…you like it?” she asks, gesturing to the painting, and she runs a hand through her hair.

“ _So_ much.”

“Good,” Kara says, and she beams down at him. “Good. I’m glad. You deserve it.” She unfolds her arms. “Can I hug you again?”

“Yeah,” Carter shrugs, and Cat’s heart lurches when he leans a little into the one-armed hug Kara slings around his shoulders. When he shifts away after a moment, not uncomfortable yet but nearing it, Kara lets go.

“Okay.” She looks up and right at Cat, who fights to hide a gasp. She hadn’t realised Kara knew she was there. “Dinner time?”

“It is,” Cat confirms. 

Carter spins around to face her, guilt dripping from his too-broad smile. “Mom! How much did you hear? Not that we were talking about anything that we would want to _hide_ from you, of course, uh, and that is all. We were talking.”

“Smooth,” Kara murmurs and Carter’s neck burns red. 

“Enough to know that Kara will be getting a pop quiz about Supergirl over dinner.” Carter grins at that and it even surprises a laugh out of Kara. “It’s dinner time, wash your hands. You too, Kiera.”

“Kara,” Carter corrects her again and he nods to the door. “C’mon, Kara, I’ll show you where the bathroom is.” He marches out in front of her and Kara shoots Cat a bewildered look. 

“I’ve been here before,” she whispers as she passes Cat, and Cat can only suppress a smile.

Carter wants to do everything with Kara. Not that Cat had thought any different. It had taken less than a day for Carter to adore Kara that first disastrous turn at baby-sitting so it’s no great surprise to see that he sits himself next to Kara—to be fair, he is _between_ Kara and his mother—and he brings her up to speed with the results of his English and Science tests and tells her about the latest sightings of Superman, which Kara latches onto eagerly. 

“Do you think you can send me the links to those articles?” she asks Carter when they clean up together. “I’d love to read up on what he’s up to.”

“Sure! Absolutely!”

“We can read some right now if you want to? You can read with me.”

“Like, _to_ you?” Kara clarifies. She fiddles nervously with her glasses and her mouth opens and closes a few times as she thinks about how to word the question. “I know it’s almost bedtime—do you, I mean, like, do you want me to read to you?”

“No,” he explains patiently, barely even blinking at the odd question. “I’m thirteen. You kinda outgrow that around, like, six.”

“Oh.” Kara returns to the dishes and she rinses them quietly before she stacks them in the dishwasher. “Right. Okay.”

“Did you want to?”

“No, that’s not it,” Kara shrugs. “I just wasn’t sure. My, I,” she shrugs again and wipes her hands rather vigorously on a hand towel. “My sister used to read to me sometimes.”

“Why’s that?” Cat asks quietly, not wanting to intrude. Carter and Kara turn to face her—obviously, they had both forgotten that she was sitting there and listening and she would smile if Kara didn’t look sad and Carter didn’t look panicked. 

“I didn’t talk a lot. When they fostered me.” Kara sees the sink is still full of water and she pulls the plug, then wipes her hands again. She takes her time and doesn't look up from her hands, making sure to dry every drop of water. “I know people were worried about me, they think maybe I hit my head or something. That I’d forgotten how to talk.”

“What was it really?” Carter asks. Cat is glad—she wasn’t sure she would have dared. 

Kara folds the hand towel and hangs it neatly in its place. “Nothing made sense. I didn’t know anyone, everything was different, everything smelled different. The sheets didn’t feel right on my skin, people kept talking _at_ me and trying to touch me and it was overwhelming.”

“Overload,” Carter says knowingly.

Kara grins. “ _Major_ overload. Anyway, Alex came up with the idea of reading to me. I think we were halfway through Wuthering Heights when I told her it sucked and she should go back to Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants.”

“I haven’t read that. Is it good?”

“It’s great, I’ll lend you a copy,” Kara promises, and he nods. 

“So do you want to read _with_ me? You don’t have to but if you want to. That would be cool.”

“Umm.” Kara glances over at Cat. She’s still not sure what she’s doing here—Cat hasn’t given her any instructions or hints so she’s at a loss—but Cat is no help. She shrugs. 

“Do what you like, Kiera. I will be in my office, preparing several severance packages.” Her tone approaches _relish_ and Carter laughs. 

“The best part of your day, mom.”

“Well, not quite. That would be seeing you.”

“Mom!”

“Too much?”

“Yeah, by like a billion per cent.” He still looks a little pleased at her comment, but he rolls his eyes and grabs Kara’s hand. Cat tries not to smile too widely at the surprised look Kara shoots her, but she doesn’t quite contain her smile when Kara looks down at Carter’s hand holding hers and her face softens and warms. “C’mon, Kara, I’ve got lots of books you can choose from.”

//

Carter is sitting cross-legged at the head of his bed, pillow on his lap, when Cat comes by later to check on them. His bedside lamp is on—it has a little plastic insert that can be changed from the Bat Signal to the Super crest and right now, she isn’t surprised to see, its that famous S emblazoned across Carter’s roof. Kara is laying on her side and she laughs at something Carter tells her. A little snort erupts, which sends Carter into near hysterics, and Kara clutches at her stomach and _throws_ her head back…and rolls right off the bed. 

Kara lands with a _thud_ and Carter, still laughing, scrambles to the edge. 

“Are you okay?” More laughter floats up from the ground and Carter grins. “Kara, that was, like, the _lamest_ thing anyone has ever done. Ever.”

“I didn’t come here to be insulted, sir.”

“It isn’t my sons fault that you make it rather easy, Kiera.”

Carter grins over at her and then looks down at Kara, who hasn’t made a peep since she heard Cat’s voice. “Kara? You alive?”

“She saw me roll off the bed?” comes a very small whisper.

“I did.”

“Oh.” Kara scrambles to her feet. “Hi, Miss Grant. We were just talking, about nothing really, um, and nothing is damaged at all, I whacked my elbow but that dent was always there I promise,” she laughs incredibly nervously, “and, uh, everything is fine. Carter! Boy, uh, it’s really late you should probably go to sleep!”

“If babbling were a superpower, I would personally make you a cape,” Cat says, and she ignores the way the pair of them freeze. “But you are right. Carter, it’s time for bed. No no,” she says when he starts to argue. “Right now.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Oh no,” Kara winces, and she reaches up to press her glasses further up her nose. “I’m sorry, I’ll just, I’ll go,” she points to the door. “I’ll, to your office, Miss Grant?”

“The kitchen will be fine.”

“Alright. _Listen to your mom, dude, or I won't be allowed back_ ,” she hisses when she walks by Carter, and he throws himself back onto his bed and folds his arms and scowls. 

“Whatever.”

“Carter Benjamin Preston Grant. Don’t argue with me.”

“I _didn’t_. But I’m gonna argue now—I’m not _tir-ed_ ,” he says, and his face falls in horror when the word breaks in two, punctured by a yawn. “Fine! But you have to wake me up before Kara leaves.”

“We’ll see. Sheets.” Carter pushes his legs under the sheets. He refolds his arms and scowls some more. He relents only when she walks in and brushes a tender hand over his forehead, kisses his head. “You want to keep your light on?” He nods. “Super or Batman?”

“Super.”

“There’s a surprise.”

“Mom?” Carter asks very softly when she stands and she sits again, smoothes the blankets over his chest. “I like Kara. Can she come around more often?”

Cat smoothes the blankets again and pats his hand. “We’ll see. Now, go to sleep."

The look in his eyes and Carter’s tone—firm, hopeful, _happy_ —stays with her and she almost forgets about Kara herself until she’s standing right in front of her. 

“Another glass of wine, Miss Grant?”

“Mm. Please.”

“I’m sorry for keeping him up,” Kara says over her shoulder, reaching up into the cupboard for the glass. Cat smiles when Kara picks her preferred brand, a rounded glass, stemless, that fits into her hand comfortably. “I didn’t realise what time it was.”

Cat dismisses that with a flick of her fingers. “He always stays up late reading anyway. He thinks he’s being sneaky but the light shows underneath the door.”

Kara grins widely and she pours a half glass and pushes it towards Cat. She leans against the counter and drops her chin into a hand. “I used to do that,” she admits. “Eliza told me once. I used to read with, uh,” she frowns, “a flashlight?” Cat nods. “Under the blankets, I thought no one could see it, I thought I was hidden but apparently it was really, really obvious.”

Cat smiles at the image. She’d caught Carter more than once, his silhouette dark against his sheets, backlight clipped to his book. She can just imagine a young Kara, reading in the dark. 

“Eliza is your foster mother?”

“Mhm, yeah.” Kara shakes her head when Cat offers her some wine. “Oh, no, thank you.”

“Would you like to sit with me?” Cat points to the couch and Kara nods, tucking her hands into the long sleeves of her sweat shirt. She looks comfortable and soft, all soft edges, in sweat pants and a sweatshirt which, once Kara straightens, Cat can see has HARVARD written over the front of it. “Harvard? I thought you went to NCU.”

“I did. This is my sisters.” She lifts the collar to her face, buries her nose in the fabric. “She loves it,” Kara tells her, grinning. “She always gets _super_ angry when I steal it.”

“Well. There’s something to be said for small victories.”

They walk to the living room and Cat sits on the end of the couch. After a slight hesitation, Kara picks an armchair. She doesn’t look comfortable though, sitting stiff and quiet, so Cat leads by example and tucks her feet underneath her body. She looks away, relaxing into the couch and staring out over her city, and she sips at her wine. When she’s almost finished, she looks back to Kara and smiles—the woman looks comfortable, socked feet pulled up in front of her, arms loosely wrapped around her knees, and her eyes serene as they take in the lights and the business of the traffic far below. 

Cat doesn’t comment on the fact that she looks rather like a certain hero who had dropped in on her the night before. Or that a certain hero had looked a lot like her. 

Instead, she asks, “Are you alright, Kara?”

Her answer—and it is a long time in coming—is a little sniffle.

Cat reaches to the side, places her wine glass down and trades it for a box of tissues kept there. She stands, walks it over to her assistant—no, her company. 

“Thank you, Miss Grant.”

“It’s Cat tonight, Kiera.” Kara tilts her head and Cat sighs. “ _Kara,_ then, if we must.” Her tone is light, though, and it only makes Kara smile. 

“Cat,” Kara tries, and it doesn’t sound as clumsy as Cat thought it might. She wonders if, when Kara talks about her to others, she uses her name. “Thank you,” she says again, and smiles. “I don’t know how you knew but I, I really didn’t want to be alone tonight.”

“Kara, you practically threw yourself into anything that meant you wouldn’t have to leave the office. You made it blindingly obvious.”

That pulls a laugh from Kara. “Well, thank you anyway. For noticing, I guess.”

Cat nods. “Would you like to talk about it now? I know you found it difficult before, but you might find it easier out of the office.”

“It’s not that. It’s not the office,” Kara tells her. She twists a tissue between her fingers thoughtfully. “You know how I feel there. I love being there, working. It gives me purpose. And you,” Kara adds, waving to Cat. “You always know what to say.”

“True.”

“But, I don’t.” Kara grimaces. “I was confused. I still am, I guess. It’s just,” she blows out a harsh breath and frowns heavily. “She’s my _sister_. And I _can’t_ talk about it because she works for the, uh, the government.” Kara says it in that way of hers, looking faintly pleased with herself for being _so_ clever, telling a lie that isn’t a lie, a truth right on the cusp of untruth. Her eyes slide slyly for a moment before meeting hers and Cat has to admit, it’s rather endearing. Painfully obvious, yes, but endearing. 

Cat knows all about non-disclosure agreements, and she knows about protecting family too, so she doesn’t press. Rather, she says, “I’m going to talk then, Kara. Tell me if I get something wrong.” She pauses, but Kara doesn’t interrupt, she just tilts her head thoughtfully at her and waits. “Your sister did something to protect you,” Cat guesses, though it’s not really a guess. Kara adores her sister wholly, so much so that Cat knows the feelings have to be returned. “It wasn’t a good something. She’s hurting because she did it and while you’re safe, it hurt you as well. You feel guilty—wrongly,” she adds, because Kara needs that, “because you’re angry with her and you feel like you shouldn’t be. She did it with good intentions. She has a lot to deal with without you being angry with her.” Kara has to look away. Cat presses on. “You’re angry because she had to do something that was morally or legally wrong. You feel responsible. You should have fixed the problem it before she had to do it, whatever it was. How am I going?”

“You…” Kara clears her throat. She wipes at her eyes roughly. “Aren’t wrong.”

“Mhm. I thought as much.” Cat softens, then. “You feel guilty because you know she feels badly about what she did, but you don’t know that you can forgive her. And you feel guilty because you love her.”

“What? Why would I feel guilty about that?”

“Because, _Kiera_ , you see the world in absolutes and now that your infallible big sister has suddenly failed in an irreparable way, you don’t know how to deal with that.”

“No, I _love_ her. Nothing is going to change that.”

“Yes. But that frightens you too, doesn’t it? How far would she have to go for you to stop loving her? How can you love someone who does terrible things? Maybe you're almost glad that she did it. So you didn't have to. Or because you wanted someone to do it."

“No, _never_. And Alex, she’s not _like_ that,” Kara snaps, eyes burning—just an expression, Cat tells herself, because those blue, blue eyes stay blue and she has to have imagined the wave of heat. “Oh.” Kara deflates, staring down at the tissue in her hand. Ripped clean in half. “Oh no.”

“It’s just a tissue, Kara.”

“I,”

“You are allowed to be angry. I know I said we aren’t, girls aren’t, but I only meant in the office. Ignoring your anger, ignoring the cause of your anger, well. That leads to problems. As you know.”

“No,” Kara says softly.

“No?”

“I don’t want to be angry. I,” she looks down at her hands, at the torn tissue. “I really don’t like being angry.” Cat can hear what she doesn’t say—it frightens her, her own anger. 

Cat makes some sound, non-committal. Understanding, to a point. But anger has always helped her, always given her sharp focus and an iron will. It’s hard for her to imagine not using it, not wanting to be angry about something—if she’s not _angry_ , she doesn’t _care_ and that’s the base line for her. 

“Everyone gets angry, Kara. It’s just a part of being—“ she stops herself before she says human. “It’s a fact of life. You will get hurt and you will get angry.”

“I don’t want—”

“But you will,” she says sharply. “It’s not a matter of want. You _will._ It’s what comes after that is important. Feel it. Figure out why and deal with it. Talk with someone you can be a little more honest with,” she suggests, and Kara blushes a little. “What else do you need?”

“Miss Gr— Cat?”

“You have space from your sister. You talked about it, in a manner of speaking. You ate, you’re not alone. What else do you need?”

“To feel better?”

“ _Obviously,_ Kiera.”

“Umm. Nothing? I’m much better now.” She falters a little under Cat’s unwavering gaze and she blushes a little at the thought that comes to mind. How relaxed she had felt with Cat right next to her, hand on her cheek. She opens her mouth to say it and then remembers—Cat is her _boss_. It would be leagues beyond the line that had been drawn. 

And yet. 

Cat had asked for a chance.

Cat had brought her back to her home, let her eat with her, let her spend time with Carter, talked her through a problem. It’s not fixed, but she _does_ feel lighter and more in control, so that’s something.

They weren’t exactly _on_ professional terms anymore. 

“What is it?” Cat presses, seeing Kara’s dilemma written so plainly on her face. “Ask it.”

“Back at the office,” Kara says, and then sucks in a breath because boy oh boy she’s going to need all her courage. “I, you…”

Cat collects her empty glass and lifts it to her lips to hide her smile. 

“Can I sit next to you?” is what Kara asks, and Cat inclines her head in a nod. _“Thank you_ ,” Kara breathes, and she picks herself up and the blanket thrown over the arm of the chair and she shuffles over to join Cat on the couch. 

“That is not next to me,” Cat says when Kara doesn’t move from the end of the seat. Kara blushes. Again. 

“Well, I didn’t want to—that is, I,”

“Kara, I presume what you really want is physical contact. You’re one of those…huggable types. Don’t think I haven’t seen you interact with your cardigan hobbit and Olsen,” Cat says with the faintest sneer. Kara wants to laugh. 

“Yes, Miss Grant. I like to hug my friends.”

“Then,” Cat says, rolling her eyes, “You may sit _next_ to me.” She moves a cushion onto her lap and lifts an eyebrow when Kara doesn’t immediately shift. “Kara?”

“Oh. Okay. If, I mean, are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Um. Okay.” Kara inches her way down the couch until she’s a slight distance away. Cat can feel the heat from her body all the way down her side and, after a moment of thought, she is the one who closes the distance so that they are comfortably side-by-side. Shoulders and legs touching. Knee to thigh. After a slight adjustment, Cat’s shoulder to Kara’s arm—the woman is tall and Cat feels small and fragile next to her. Kara is solid, and though everything is all hidden by a too-large sweatshirt, a helplessly kind smile and glasses, there’s _some_ kind of power in her. Cat relaxes. She’s still Kara, and this is unfamiliar but not unwelcome. 

It takes Kara a few moments more before she too relaxes and her body softens against Cat’s. “Thank you for bringing me here, Cat,” Kara says quietly, looking out the living room window across the city. “It really is beautiful.”

“It is,” Cat agrees. “Has Carter ever told you why here? Why this apartment?”

Kara shakes her head no.

“Would you like to know?”

“Oh yes,” Kara nods. “I would love to.”

Cat’s fingers pull at the corner of the cushion on her lap and she thinks back, smiles. “It was a whim,” she admits. “I was looking for a home for us, me and Carter. Something a little more pedestrian than this, if I’m honest. Fence, garden, homey.” Kara turns her head to watch Cat, leaning back against the couch, and she smiles as she listens. “He had just turned three. Dark hair, dark eyes, precocious of course.”

“Of course,” Kara murmurs, and shares a smile with Cat. 

“We only came here because it was on the list and Carter demanded we work through it, top to bottom. I didn’t think it was suitable but that’s what he wanted so I agreed and we stood here,” Cat lifts her finger, just a little, to gesture at the window. It’s a soft movement, only meant to bring Kara further into the story. “There was nothing else in the apartment. Absolutely empty. White walls, no furniture, abysmal bathroom. It didn’t matter. Carter stood at that window and he _stared_ ,” she says. “I couldn’t— _wouldn’t_ —pull him away. I signed the papers right then and there.”

“It’s nice,” Kara says softly when a few moments have passed. Cat turns to her. “How much you love him. It’s really nice.”

“Yes, well. He makes it extraordinarily easy.”

“Yeah. But,” Kara yawns. “I know you go the extra mile. He does too. He talked about you a lot, y’know. In our interview.”

“He did?”

“Yeah. He really loves you, Cat.”

She nods and turns away, focusing her eyes on the view and hoping that her rather observant assistant won’t notice the way her eyes glaze over a little. Unfortunately, she does, and all the effort Cat put into having her relax was gone as she tenses and sits up slowly and inches away. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry Miss Grant, did I say something wrong? Did I overstep? I’m sorry, I—”

“Enough, Kara. I was just very touched by what you said.”

“Oh.” Kara beams. Then, she reaches out and lays her hand on Cat’s knee. She squeezes gently and then pulls her hand back onto her own lap.

They talk a little more—some work, some stories Kara shares about her sister, gentle stories about when they were younger, about college, about sister squabbles because Cat knows that Kara needs to remind herself of that right now, they talk about Carter growing up in this home—and Cat finds by the end of the hour that Kara has grown very quiet and she is listening to Cat very intently and her eyes are focused on her own arm, where Cat’s hand is resting gently. 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, and she pulls her hand away.

“I don’t mind,” Kara tells her.

“Kara,”

“I n—I need it, actually,” Kara says, and her face blushes remarkably hot as she realises what that sounds like. “I don’t mean, I just meant that, you _asked_ ,” she reminds Cat, who bites the inside of her cheeks to stop from smirking at Kara’s distressed tone, “what I needed and physical contact is, I need it.”

“I understand.” And she does. She really, truly does know what it feels like to be alone and to have someone hold her. “We _are_ making strides at ignoring what I said about professionalism tonight, aren’t we?” she jokes, and Kara grins back at her, eyes bright. 

“Yes, Miss Grant.”

“So, how would you like to do this?” Cat asks, with a hint of seductive because it’s late and she is tired and it seems like a good idea at the time, especially when the blush that hadn’t quite faded from Kara’s cheeks returns with a vengeance. 

“I, umm, you can decide?” Kara offers. 

Cat stares at her for a long moment. Then, she reaches up to her face. Her fingertips skim over Kara’s cheekbones and then tangle in her hair, searching for the tie that holds it up. Kara tries not to focus on the way her skin prickles in lines identical to those that Cat’s fingers draw, or the way her lungs don’t quite want to fill, or the way her blood seems to pump terribly loudly in her ears. 

“Glasses,” Cat demands, hand out, when Kara’s hair falls loose. 

Kara bites her lip and blinks owlishly at Cat, who does’t waver. Her fingers shake only the tiniest bit when she pulls the frames from her eyes—she has to take a moment, as those extra sounds hit her, as her eyes unfocus, the stars, the faces, all the lights demanding her attention—and she folds them carefully and hands them over. Cat places them on the side table.

“Good. Lay down,” she says, and Kara blinks.

“Miss Grant?”

“Lay down.”

Kara does, slowly, and Cat adjusts her until Kara realises what she wants and then she tucks her feet up on the couch and lowers her head onto the pillow in Cat’s lap and, when Cat settles one hand on her shoulder and the other beings to play softly with Kara’s hair, Kara finds herself relaxing shockingly quickly. 

“Oh that’s nice,” Kara breathes, Cat scraping her nails lightly behind her ear and just above her neck. She shivers a little. “No one’s ever done this for me before.” Cat pauses, very slightly. Kara sounds half delirious, tired and and thrilled. She reaches up and presses Cat’s hand back to her head. “Why’d you stop?”

Cat continues. “You are greedy.”

“Wait until you have to feed me breakfast,” Kara laughs, and she shuffles a little in place and rubs her eyes with a closed fist. “Are things going to be weird tomorrow?”

“Most likely,” Cat admits. “But you needed this. So,” she clears her throat. “I will try to make it less…weird.”

“I’ll help.” Kara yawns again. “Whatever you need.”

Cat smiles down at the other woman and pats her shoulder. Allows her fingers, now, in the soft dark, while it feels like it’s alright to do this, allows her fingers to move down from her shoulder down her arm, to her wrist and back up in slow, tender lines. Kara shivers and smiles. 

“You make me feel more real,” Kara says later, very softly, when Cat thought she was asleep. “More like Kara.”

There is something in the way that she says her own name that is a little unfamiliar. A hint of an accent, maybe, a fullness to the name that she doesn’t remember ever hearing before. It’s her real name, Cat realises. The way her family had said it. 

“Kara,” Cat tries to mimic the way she said it, and Kara’s smile isn’t wide or bright—it just is. 

“That’s pretty close.”

“What does it mean?”

“My name?” Cat hums a yes. Kara shrugs. Tucks her hands inside the too-long sleeves of her sweatshirt. “Beloved. Pure, cherished.” She pauses. “It’s the way it feels,” she closes her eyes and turns in Cat’s lap so that her eyes are on the ceiling and Cat holds her hands still for a moment, trying to figure out where she can touch Kara, and her answer comes when Kara takes her floating hand and holds it in hers. “When Carter laughs at something, or he’s telling you about his good day and you can’t help but smile and everything feels a little lighter, brighter.” Kara opens her eyes. She reaches up and, with the tips of her first two fingers, she touches Cat’s sternum gently. Cat stares down at her with wide eyes. “And you feel it, right here?”

“I know it.”

“That’s _kara_ ,” Kara says, with a slightly different inflection. “Beloved.”


	10. Chapter 10

It feels strange to wake up in her own bed.

Cat wakes slowly to the sound of her alarm—she stretches her legs, then her back, then lifts her arms over her head and pushes until her muscles just start that delicious burn. She lowers her hands and scrunch them in the sheets, breathes in the soft barely-there scent of her laundry cleaner, her own shampoo, perfume. She’s comfortable and warm and safe so why, she wonders, letting her hands trail across the covers and delighting in the feel of the smooth fabric sliding against the skin of her palms and fingertips, _why_ is she confused? Why does it feel like she should be somewhere else? Why does it feel like she’s missing something? 

Cat’s eyes flash open and she stares up at her ceiling.

_Kara_.

She sits up in her bed and searches the room for any signs of the other woman. There are none. The other side of her bed remains rumple free—she’s still half stuck in sleep, so she doesn’t consider _why_ she thought Kara might have slept in her room—and there is no indication that Kara has been in her room at all. Except…yes, yes she _was_ because Cat might not remember falling asleep but she _does_ remember, through a haze, that there were two hands on her shoulders and a kind, blurred face leaning in towards her and a soft voice that told her it was time to go to bed. She remembers—oh, she remembers that Kara smells the way warmth feels and her skin prickles all over when she realises that Kara had lifted her into her arms and carried Cat to her room.

Cat smoothes her hands over the edge of her sheets. She pulls at the edge, tugging it neatly across her lap and she folds and straightens and folds it again. Her fingers do not stop as she considers her next set.

Is Kara even still here?

What did she think about the night before? There was nothing untoward about it, just a warm intimacy that was hushed and _friendly._

What will it be like in the office? That thought gives Cat pause—she is more than capable of pretending like nothing had changed. Her work means more to her than anything else, save Carter, and she will not have that ruined by anything. Not, she admits, looking over at her bedroom door, that Kara would ruin anything. No, that woman is too _good._ And she understands what Cat’s work means to her.

Cat purses her lips thoughtfully.

Now that she knows Kara’s warmth, knows the way Carter lights up next to her not as a reflection of Kara’s light, but one of his very own, now that she knows the weight of Kara leaning against her, how her hair feels between her fingers, how she smiles at Carter and how it feels to have that smile turned on her, and knows what it is like to be carried in her arms—now that she knows how her own body reacts to nothing more than an innocent touch, Cat finds herself on quite unfamiliar ground.

She doesn’t know what to do next.

But it will all become clear with a little more information.

That has been the truest thing in Cat’s life for many years. If she just has the patience to wait long enough, everything becomes clear. Her husbands strange moods? She hadn’t had to wait too long to figure that one out actually—he was cheating. Her second husbands strange moods? That took a little longer, but as it turned out he was unhappy and lonely and, oh, also cheating. It came from a place of loneliness rather than spite, true, but still. Ice caps melting? Global warming. Her mothers abysmal behaviour? So many reasons.

So, with half a decision made— _wait_ —she does as she always does and she showers and dresses for the day ahead, clads herself in a smart suit, admires the blouse and the way her jacket sits and across her throat like armour she drapes a necklace all fine-looped chains. She primps in front of the mirror until she’s perfect.

Then she goes to wake Carter.

Carter who is, in fact, _not_ in his bed.

He was—the sheets are kicked down to the end of the bed and his lamp is still on, so Cat crosses over and switches it off and she tugs the sheet up too, until they are neat. She makes a note to talk to her son about the very few rules she has. One of which is that he must make his bed in the morning. Every morning.

She thinks back with a little smile of the time that her son—her clever, clever boy—had stomped his little foot the third time he was punished for not making his bed and had loudly declared, even though his lower lip trembled, that it “wasn’t fair” because she had never told him _which_ morning he had to make his bed. How was he to know that she’d meant every morning? It was less a tantrum, more a misunderstanding—as soon as she had corrected herself, he had calmed down and wiped at his runny nose with his sleeve and, with only four notable exceptions, he’d made his bed every morning ever since.

Five.

_Five_ exceptions, now.

Today makes one more and she can think of only one reason that Carter would forget something so engrained.

Cat makes her way down the hall to the kitchen and she smiles at the scene that greets her.

It’s a mess. There is flour here and there, empty packets and streaks of batter. There are bowls upon bowls and plates and she would be horrified if it weren’t for the fact that in the centre of it—flour in his hair and his little face set firmly with concentration—is Carter.

He’s standing at the kitchen island and mixing something in a large bowl. A very large bowl that Cat doesn’t recognise as one of her own and he grunts as he tries to push a wooden spoon through the mixture.

“Kara,” he whines without looking up. “Help.”

“What’s wrong?” she asks, and she steps out of the pantry—yet _more_ flour in hand—and there isn’t enough time for Cat to control the stutter of her heart or her slight gasp.

Kara is sleep tousled and _golden_. She’s stripped off the sweatshirt from the night before and, in long flannel sleep pants and a tank top, she’s something straight out of one of Cat’s very private dreams. Barefoot, hair up in a messy bun, long strands tickling at her neck, and glasses firmly in place, Kara is the most beautiful woman Cat has ever seen and the thought makes Cat’s stomach lurch.

Of course Kara is beautiful. She’s a very beautiful woman, Cat isn’t blind—of course she’s _noticed_. It’s what is behind the realisation that surprises Cat—behind the admiration, the acknowledgement, and yes, okay, the arousal, there is something that is settling. Her thoughts—her plans for the day, her half formed questions to ask Carter this morning, her requests for breakfast—stop. Her heart rate that had been steadily ticking faster, slows. Steadies. Her eyes—moving from Kara’s hair to her toned, toned arms, to that sliver of skin offered, tantalising, to Cat when Kara’s shirt rides up, to her bare feet, to her smile, to her hands—return to Kara’s face and she is loathe to look away.

For a moment, there is just Kara.

There is something anti-climatic about it.

She needs to understand, needs to explain it to herself, and she grabs at the first explanation that settles in her mind, the first memory of something that felt like this, and it is too small, it’s not right, but it’s right enough that she lets it play out. It’s something like, she thinks, the frustration of searching for her keys, a feeling that builds and builds with every place she checks and then it just…stops. Disappears once she’s found them. Much like that, here is Kara. No, Kara is no lost set of keys, but she still elicits the instant feeling of victory, of success—fruition, her mind supplies, and she thinks it fits quite well. Connotation is a foundation of the world she has created, and fruition? Fruition comes with fulfilment, success, something new and anticipated and sweet—the way that victory is supposed to taste on your tongue.

Something shifts inside her and Cat can’t— _won’t_ —go back now that she sees Kara.

The only way, then, is forward and Cat Grant, CEO of CatCo WorldWide Media, has never been a slouch in going for the things that she wants.

Her eyes rake hot over Kara’s figure, lingering on the bunch of her biceps, the sweet curve of her lips, the warmth in her eyes, oh _god_ the length of her legs and the almost indecent cut of her hips where the sweatpants sit low on her hips…

_Yes,_ she thinks. _I want Kara_.

As if she had said it out loud, Kara jerks her head up to face Cat and her smile flickers for a moment before, strangely and utterly lovely, it grows even more bright.

“Miss Grant,” Kara greets her sweetly, eyes crinkling under the force of her smile. “Good morning.”

“Cat,” she corrects.

Kara swallows—Cat’s eyes dip to the hollow between her collarbones, catch the throb of Kara’s pulse, the movement of that golden skin, and she burns to feel it for herself.

“ _Cat_ ,” Kara whispers, eyes wide, and Cat lifts her gaze, unhurriedly. She wonders if Kara can feel her gaze phantom light on her skin, a preview of the way Cat wants to touch her. Her fingers tingle. Kara’s eyes are all dark and wide and feverishly hot. And then she blinks—holds her eyes closed for a few seconds—and looks down at the pancake mix. “Would you like some pancakes, Cat?”

“Please.” There’s something Cat wants more, though. Craving it. Something _hot_ and delicious and—

“There’s coffee too,” Kara grins, recognising the look in her eyes, and Cat throws her an adoring look before she can stop herself. Not, she admits within the privacy of her own head, that she would have.

Breakfast is a hurried affair—they all have to leave soon, Carter for school, Kara and Cat for work—and Kara pours out pancake after pancake onto plates. Mother and son watch, with something like horror and admiration respectively, as Kara swallows down nine.

“My god,” Cat breathes. Carter laughs. Kara blushes.

“I…” Kara just shrugs and smiles a little sheepishly. Then she catches sight of the clock. “Oh! Carter! You gotta get dressed—you’ve got school!”

Carter yelps at the time and Cat goes to help him—she packs his bag for him and puts some money in his wallet for lunch and he blushes a bright red when he runs back into his bedroom in a towel, wet curls plaster to his forehead. She makes a quick exit.

The kitchen is spotless—a thermos of hot coffee waiting on the corner of the island closest to her, and Cat picks it up and sips from it with a pleased smile—and, with only five more minutes to get Carter out of the house and into the car, she turns to call for Kara to hurry.

“Ka—”

“I’m here,” Kara hops around the corner, tugging on one of her flats. She has showered too, and dressed, and she is neat. Impeccably so. Not a strand of hair out of place. Cat feels an impulsive sense of loss that she didn’t get to enjoy the messier side of Kara for longer.

“That was quick,” she says, and reaches out to needlessly straighten Kara’s blouse. She can’t resist. She is, however, careful not to touch skin.

“I didn’t want to make Carter late. Or you.”

“Hmm.”

“Mom, I have a presentation can you check my bag,” Carter yells, the end of his sentence muffled, and Cat takes a step toward him. Kara stops her, takes the bag gently from her hands.

“USB, speech, palm cards,” she yells back. “What else do you need?”

“My tie! And blazer! I can’t find them!” A few loud thuds accompany the statement, meaning he’s probably thrown some shoes from his cupboard.

“Your shoes aren’t hiding them, Carter,” Kara chastises. She fiddles with her glasses for a moment and Cat wonders at how obvious she is, but for the sake of her morning, she goes easy on the woman and reaches into her purse to pull out a hand mirror. Cat checks her lipstick and teeth and fights the urge to look over at Kara, who has the opportunity to dip her glasses and look. Properly.

“Did you check your moms study?” Kara suggests, loudly.

There’s a moment of silence, then, “Got them!”

“Your hat too. It’s in the kitchen.”

“Thank you!”

“Are we all set then?” Cat asks and she clicks her hand mirror closed, lifts her eyebrows at a sheepish Kara. “I’m sure I’ll be getting a neighbourly warning about volume control before eight a.m. so thank you for that,” she says in a way that does not mean thank you at all.

“Sorry, Miss Grant,” Kara apologises so earnestly, and Cat softens.

“It’s Cat,” she insists. Again. “Until we are in the office.” She can _see_ the words forming just behind Kara’s lip—this isn’t _professional_ —and she damns herself for reacting as she had, for making such a final demand that has been proving so hard to get beyond. She halts what Kara means to say before she says it, reaches out to grip Kara’s elbow. She manages not to gasp—Kara is so warm, her skin is so soft beneath her fingers and Cat thinks, distantly, that surely it shouldn’t feel this way. It should feel…and her mind won’t supply the word, veers away at the very last moment, so Cat feels like she’s just hanging there, foolishly gaping—and then her thumb drags up across the sensitive, soft, soft, _soft_ patch of skin there on the inside of Kara’s elbow and Kara is the one to gasp. Sucks in her breath and holds it, eyes wide and a little confused.

“I know,” Cat says. “It’s not professional.”

“You know?” Kara is quieter than Cat, whether because of the volume reprimand or because Cat’s hand is on her skin Cat can’t be sure.

“Yes.”

“But…” Her eyebrows bunch and she shakes her head slowly.

“It was a mistake to do that,” Cat admits and Kara’s eyes widen further. “I asked for a chance to prove that this is no trick, that I mean what I say when I tell you I’d like to move past that.” Kara inclines her head in a small nod. “I was wrong. And,” she wants desperately to look away, to play it off as less than it is. She shakes her head, lips pressed together, and blows a small laugh out her nose. “The truth is, I’ve missed you.”

“ _Oh.”_

Right in front of Cat, Kara goes from confused to _bright_. She loses the last of her unease—presumably from being here, in Cat’s home, with Cat, and not knowing _why_ exactly—and it’s beautiful to see those Kara smiling back at her.

“I missed you as well.” There’s a moment—Cat’s fingers tighten a little, her thumb brushes over her skin again, Kara lets her, sways a little towards her—and then Kara tilts her head to the side, fixes Cat with a curiously blank look and offers, “We could go back. To like it was before.”

“No.” Oh Cat considered it. It would be the easiest and perhaps best thing to do. “I despise going backwards, Kiera,” she says with a quirk of her lips and a raised eyebrow that Kara, having sat in on many meetings and just as many reprimands, is well and truly familiar with. So it’s no surprise that she sees, too, the ways in which it is lacking any real punch behind it and that the quirk of her lips reads something like amusement.

“Of course, Cat.”

“Oh good, you remembered. I was beginning to think you couldn’t be trained.” She looks away from Kara—whose eyebrows shot right up and who threw her head back to _laugh_ —and there, at the end of the hall, is Carter. Staring at them. “Oh! School!”

“Uh _yeah_ ,” Carter says with a frown. “We have to _go_.”

Kara snaps into action, grabbing his bag and her own, and she walks out to the hall and looks to the elevators, then to Cat, then to the stairs. “Meet you down there,” she says cheerfully, and practically skips her way to the stairwell.

Cat rolls her eyes and clicks her tongue and she steps onto the elevator with Carter, using his helpful hands to hold open his purse. She searches through it, looking for her lipstick. “ _Meet you down there’,_ ” she mimics, rolling her eyes. “ _I’m a fast runner._ ” She makes a loud sound of derision in her throat and Carter faces straight ahead and does his best not to grin.

* * *

Work is much the same as it always is. Except, Kara is working harder again. Not that she ever slacked, but there is that anticipation element—she’s barely a breath into calling for Kiera when she appears in front of her, coffee scalding in one hand, tablet in the other, and a stream of adjustments to the schedule coming from her mouth.

“Carter will be calling in an hour to tell you about his science presentation.” She grins and reaches up to adjust her glasses. “It’s about water pollution, it’s a pretty big deal. He did a _great_ job.”

“You helped?”

“No, no I just looked over it.” Kara rushes to explain. “My sister loves science, I may have asked her a couple of things and she said that his reasoning was all solid. And I…I may have had a _few_ pointers but he did _all_ the work, I promise.” Cat lifts a hand to stroke her lips, telling herself not to smile. Kara gulps and looks down at her tablet, searching for something else she can tell Cat. “Oh, I also noticed that the meeting you had scheduled for next week has been moved up to this afternoon. I had it moved back to four,” Kara tells her and Cat’s head snaps up with a glare.

“You did what?”

“Miss Grant—“

“Kiera, just because you and my son had a sleepover it does not mean that you can make changes like that.”

“ _Miss Grant_ ,” Kara says firmly. “That is not why I did it. I moved it back so that you had two hours to prepare for it. Jackson cancelled his meeting with you at two and I’ve blocked that off as well.”

“Why on earth would I need that much time to prepare?” Cat asks her, confused.

Kara pauses, takes in a breath, and continues without answering. “Lucy is free then so I went ahead and asked her to bring up the contracts that you will be going over, just a refresher, and there are some other files as well. I’ve had the minutes from all the previous meetings with them printed.”

“ _Why?_ ” Cat asks again.

“Because I don’t think you should hire him.” Cat’s eyes widen and all the fury she’d let go of when Kara changed the schedule comes running back. But Kara pays no mind and she charges her way around the table and spins Cat’s computer around so it’s facing her and she talks quickly as she logs out of Cat’s account and into her own. “He’s a sleaze, Miss Grant. He’s got a terrible reputation and I didn’t know anything about it until I overheard what they called him. Mr _Handsey,”_ she tells Cat.

His name, Cat knows, is Mr Hansel and the nickname isn’t clever at all but she understands what it means.

“He’s worked with a lot of people and everyone I’ve asked has told me that they weren’t comfortable working with him. There are a _lot_ of rumours going around with the other assistants. I don’t know how much is true or how far he’s gone but it’s enough that he’s had seven assistants in the past year and they’ve all either quit or asked to be relocated.” Kara pauses and, quietly, she says, “Two of them by me.”

“You?”

“You, technically.” Kara’s gaze slips sideways. She takes in Cat’s blank expression—not a good sign—and she’s already made a mess of this so she continues. “Do you remember Anna May?” Cat blinks slowly. “Five five, tenth of August, she was wearing a really nice black pant suit and you complimented her on her shoes because she brought you a coffee.”

“Yes,” Cat agrees, a face flashing to the front of her mind. Kara had a knack for that—recalling things in just the way that Cat could follow. And her memory… Cat frowns at the girl, suddenly curious how much Kara was keeping from her.

“You liked her. You helped her get a job in one of the Central City branches.”

“I see.”

Kara stands up from where she was bent over Cat’s computer and she spins it back to face the woman, who notes that the document she has opened has twenty pages to it. “None of the girls lodged any formal complaint about him but I’ve been putting together some statements from people who have complained about other stuff. The girls want to stay anonymous but I think I can get you something concrete.”

“I see,” Cat says again, voice cold. “Get me the information you’ve put together. And contact the assistants—if one of them comes forward, I’ll be able to fire him without him claiming unfair dismissal. Not,” she says with a shrug, “that I care if he _does_. It’s just a headache I don’t need.”

“Miss Grant,” Kara says, and she gulps and steps back when Cat _glares_ at her. “I’m sorry.”

“You knew about this and you didn’t tell me, Kiera, I think it will take more than a sorry to forget…this.”

“I wanted to have something substantial before I came to you with it, get enough information for you. But then your meeting got moved up to today and—”

“And now I have another problem to fix. Thank you so much for your incompetence.”

Kara locks her hands together in front of her and tries not to tremble. Cat sounds furious—furious, controlled, and, somewhere deep beneath it, _hurt_.

“I wanted you to have all the information first. I didn’t want you to make a decision if I was missing something.” She feels like she’s repeating herself. She also feels like Cat isn’t _listening_.

“That is always my decision to make.” Cat purses her lips and this time when she looks at Kara, her fury is even more directed. She’s found a target in Kara, it seems. Later, in Mr Handsey, but for now her assistant— _Kara_ —kept this from her, could have made her look like an idiot, could have put other girls, other assistants in _danger_ and she’s furious. “He’s been harassing people. I rather think that’s enough grounds for dismissal, don’t you?”

“Of course I do!”

“Then—,” Cat looks down at her computer and says tightly, “Kiera, get me the documents you prepared.”

“Anything else?”

Cat puts her glasses in place and, ever so coolly, says, “Get out.”

//

Winn and James don’t understand why Kara is so upset by this turn of events—they pat her clumsily on the shoulder and Winn tells her that he’ll try and dig up some more dirt for her and Miss Grant to use and James tells her that he’ll go and help Lucy draft up a severance to get it all going faster and it’s all _helpful_ but she can’t tell them that she visited Cat two nights before and sat and drank with her and she can’t tell them that Cat took her home last night and that Cat is softer and sweeter and she’s clever and helpful and _kind_ and her fingers working through Kara’s hair felt like heaven and that at one point, Kara had forgotten herself and had let Kryptonian ease over her tongue and fill the space and in that moment, Cat’s apartment had felt like the closest thing to home she’d felt in a while.

She can’t tell them that. Or how now, now she has so quickly and thoroughly not only disappointed Cat but _hurt_ her somehow, Kara isn’t too clear on the details of that but she knows that she heard it in her voice.

So instead, she does her job and she does it well.

At one minute to five, Cat calls her into her office with a very restrained “Kiera”.

It’s the first time Cat has spoken to her since that morning and apprehension hits Kara full strength—her knees lock in place and her hands tremble and sweat beads between her shoulders and at the small of her back. She can’t make her legs hold her weight so instead she’s just staring nervously through the glass windows of Cat’s office when Cat looks up and glares at her. “Now, Kiera.”

“Yes, Miss Grant?” she asks breathlessly, hurrying in. She can’t quite feel her legs moving and she hopes that’s just nerves—she hopes she isn’t floating and she risks a quick look down but no, she’s okay, her feet are touching the floor.

“Has all the paperwork gone through for the Hansel incident?”

“Yes, Miss Grant. Lucy pushed it through so that it would be done before close of business. She’s staying to finalise some things but she e-mailed me to let me know. You should also have the e-mail.” Kara waits as Cat clicks through her inbox and then the woman hums and nods. “Was there anything el—“

“Stay there,” is all Cat says, and she fixes Kara with a cold look that freezes her to the spot. Cat doesn’t look away until Kara nods—and she does, quickly—and then she returns to her computer.

Kara waits for ten minutes. She stands there, and it doesn’t occur to her to clear her throat or fidget or ask any questions. Cat is making her wait—Cat wants her to wait, and wait, and when she’s ready and when she’s finished planning what she wants to say, only then will Cat look up at her and say it.

Finally, Cat stands. She makes her way around her desk until she’s standing in front of Kara who, to her credit, doesn’t flinch.

“Balcony. Go.”

Kara goes. She opens the door and spins in place, holding it open for Cat to walk through as well. She closes it behind them—there is a dark mood surrounding Cat, Kara sees it in the tension in her shoulders and the way she holds her glass close to her mouth instead of lowering it down at all, and the sharp click of her heels against the tiles.

“Sit.”

She wipes her hands on her dress—her trembling, clammy hands—and sits.

Cat hooks a thumb into the pocket of her pants and she paces along the balcony for a short time. Kara follows with just her eyes. Left. Right. Left. She pauses. Takes a long sip from her glass. Right again. Then, she turns and faces Kara.

“What do you think of me?” she asks.

“Excuse me?”

“Your impression of me, Kiera. What is it?” She’s just shy of tapping her foot impatiently and her eyebrows are lowering with every second Kara doesn’t answer.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Kara admits, a little shaken. There are a lot of ways she could answer.

“I want you to tell me the truth.”

Cat’s eyes flash with a challenge and Kara responds. Her shoulders straighten and she sits upright. “You’re Cat Grant,” Kara says firmly, and her eyes roam over Cat’s face trying to figure out _why_ she’s doing this—not what she wants to hear, there are so many possibilities, but if Kara knows the _why_ then she’ll know what Cat needs. Not that it matters. Kara won’t lie—she doesn’t want to, and also Cat Grant can sniff a lie out a mile away—but she wants to know what truth Cat wants. “You’re an amazing writer and business woman. You’re a great mom. You’re successful and smart and—“

“Enough.” Cat holds up her free hand. “I understand.”

There’s a flatness to her tone that worries Kara.

“Miss Grant?”

“You can leave.”

“No.” Cat looks faintly surprised but that too fades quickly—their mess of a relationship has changed too rapidly over the last few days for her to _really_ be surprised that Kara says no to her. “What do you want to hear? I know that if you have to ask it’s not the same, but reassurance is not the same as a lie.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Cat’s voice is clipped and cool and Kara frowns.

She sits still for a few minutes, picking apart the whole thing and trying to see it from Cat’s point of view. Then, quietly, she says, “You have built an empire, Cat.” The woman smiles but she doesn’t look pleased. “I just wanted to help you protect it.”

“Protect it.” Cat sniffs, shakes her head. “Kiera, you should _never_ protect men like that. My _empire_ is not built on the same premise of others—I am not in the business of tolerating men who cannot keep their hands to themselves. Do you understand?”

“I—yes, but—“

“Enough.”

“No,” Kara says for the second time. She lifts a hand to her forehead, touches two fingers to the point above her eyebrow where a headache is suddenly _throbbing_ and she sighs—why doesn’t Cat _understand?_ “I wasn’t protecting _him._ I would _never_ ,” she says and Cat turns away a little so Kara stands and makes her way the short distance to the other woman. “I would have told you the second I found out about him, the very second.”

Cat’s eyebrows lift lazily and she takes a long, slow pull from her glass—she wants so much to show Kara that she doesn’t care about this, about what has happened, but she _does_ and Kara doesn’t know why. “So why didn’t you?” she asks, like she is bored.

“I thought you would want something substantial. Something to back you up. I thought you would want proof.”

“And seven women all making the same complaint isn’t proof enough?”

“It is.” Kara sighs and looks away. “I didn’t mean to blindside you with this, Miss Grant. I was preparing everything so you would be able to look it over before your meeting.” Cat just presses her lips together and Kara reaches up to adjust her glasses. “I’m sorry,” she says again and then, taking a risk, she asks, “What do you think I meant? My description of you, what do you think I meant?”

“I’m a business woman first and foremost. Heartless. Driven by the bottom line. Don’t worry,” Cat waves a hand. “I’ve heard it all before.”

“That is _not_ what I said.” Kara’s voice is steel and Cat turns sharply towards her, utterly unsurprised by the force and confidence in Kara’s eyes but not expecting it here, now. “That’s not what I said at all.” Cat rolls her eyes. Kara frowns. “For someone who made her career off listening to and understanding people,” she says, “you’re not doing it very well.”

Cat snaps her head around and the rest of her body follows. She steps closer to Kara, glower in place. “What did you say to me?”

“I said you aren’t _listening_.”

“I don’t have to listen to my assistant.”

“Then why did you ask?” Kara shoots back and they stand toe to toe, neither of them backing down. Until, unexpectedly, Cat does. She lifts her gaze just a little, away from Kara, and nods.

“What did you mean?”

“You’re amazing,” Kara breathes. “You care. A lot. About what you write about and who. About making a difference. And, and you’re smart and driven and you don’t take no for an answer. You fight for what you want. You’re fair above everything else. And Carter? Carter _loves_ you. How could any of that amount to heartless? How could any of that amount to, to impersonal or _cruel_?” Kara blinks her eyes quickly and she clenches her jaw shut tight. “You’re Cat Grant,” she says again, and at her tone, Cat wilts and folds herself into the second chair and turns her head to rest in one hand. “Cat?” Kara whispers. The woman doesn’t look up. She’s near to tears, Kara realises, and she thinks about it for a split second before she kneels next to her and, as Cat had for her the night before, she places a hand on her knee and looks up to Cat’s face. “I know you care about your employees, Cat. I know that you care about these woman. You didn’t fail them.”

Cat lifts her head, tilts it the smallest bit. Nothing about her expression changes but she doesn’t look away from Kara’s earnest eyes.

And she is earnest. Earnest and desperate. This is an opportunity, Kara realises, not only to reassure Cat but more than that, this is her chance to show Cat that Kara can see her.

She would be a fool to think that Cat Grant, possibly one of the smartest people Kara has ever met, hasn’t started to put together that Kara is Supergirl—she’d found her out once and now Kara suspects that it is just good manners that has stopped Cat from confronting her again. This is her chance to show Cat and it’s important for reasons that Kara doesn’t dare look into right this very moment that Cat sees herself the way that Kara does.

It’s important that Cat knows Kara can see _her_.

“You did not fail these women,” Kara tells her. “You have made a company that women want to come to. Two years ago, I told my sister I wanted to be your assistant and do you know what she said to me?” Cat shakes her head. Her shoulders tighten—readying herself for an insult, Kara thinks. “ _CatCo has done some great things for women in STEM. You’ll do good things there._ ” Cat blinks. “It might not sound like much,” she admits, “but Alex isn’t very forthcoming with praise for most things. From her, that’s a glowing endorsement. And I, it was important. To me. All I’ve ever wanted is to do good things. I thought, if I was useful to someone like _you,_ I could help you do great things. And I have. Every day.” Kara’s fingers stroke softly for a moment. “Working for you is a dream come true. You are changing the world.”

Cat looks at her lips as she speaks, faintly bewildered.

Kara squeezes her knee gently. “You can’t stop people from making their own decisions. And they _did_ have their own reasons for not coming forward. They might not know you the way I do,” she says and she can’t believe that she said that, even if it is true, and she hurries on, “they might not know how much you care but they know that you do. This… It wasn’t about CatCo not having the right reporting policies or about you not making it clear that harassment is unacceptable. You’ve done that. This isn’t on you.” She squeezes Cat’s knee again. “It’s not on you, you don’t have to take it on.”

She’s run out of things to say, so she just rests her hand warmly there and Cat’s eyes roam over her face. Kara tries to show her, with her eyes, her expression, how fervently she believes everything she just said.

After some time, Cat’s eyes slip closed and she sighs.

“Olsen told you. About…about the woman who died.”

Kara closes her eyes as well. Her heart pangs at the thought of it—a woman, killed by her own husband, a young Cat Grant dealing with the guilt of knowing—and she nods. “He did. I was having an ethical dilemma. I couldn’t talk to you,” she admits, and after a slight hesitation she lifts her other hand from her lap and reaches to touch the back of Cat’s. She holds her breath when the woman draws her hand away, but she just turns her hand and opens it and Kara rests her hand in Cat’s. “I never meant for you to think that I don’t trust you, Cat. I do. All I wanted to do was help.”

“It would have been fine,” Cat admits, “if the meeting hadn’t been moved up.” Kara smiles with relief. Cat doesn’t hate her. “You didn’t tell me about Max.”

Kara blinks. “Max?”

“Maxwell Lord. When he was harassing you.”

“I…” Kara wants to draw her hand away but she’s afraid that Cat will read into that—read that Kara doesn’t trust her, and that’s the last thing she wants Cat to think.

“But he wasn’t really sexually harassing you, was he?” Cat continues. “He wants something else from you.” Kara nods. “He really does want you to work for him.”

“Yes.”

“Hmm,” is all Cat says and then she lifts her head with a slight sniff. “Classic Max. Can’t find himself an exceptional assistant so he wants to take _mine_.”

Kara smiles. She recognises that for what it is—Cat drawing back a little, away from Kara, from what they were getting too close to talking about again—and she doesn’t begrudge her for it. She welcomes it. Plus, it’s only fair—Kara has Supergirl; Cat has Cat Grant, CEO. She gives her a few moments and then she falls back into the role she knows Cat needs from her.

“Is there anything I can do, Miss Grant?” Kara asks, and she’s wholly unprepared for the _heat_ in Cat’s eyes when she looks down at her, kneeling next to her. Cat’s hand closes tightly around Kara’s. “Cat?” she asks quietly.

Cat stares at her for a long while—Kara waits.

“Carter is giving me his transcripts tomorrow,” Cat tells her matter of factly.

“For the Supergirl interview?”

“Yes.”

“That must be very exciting,” Kara says, smiling gently. She’s not sure exactly what Cat is trying to say, just that the wild hot look in her eyes hasn’t faded and instincts are pinging in the back of Kara’s mind telling her to go slowly and softly and carefully.

“Do you think I should use them?”

“Me?” Kara’s eyes widen. “I—well, yes. Carter wants you to have them. And you might be able to write something really interesting with what she gave him.”

“I could write something interesting with the babbling of a three year old, Kiera,” Cat says with a roll of her eyes and Kara dips her head in a nod, hiding a grin. Cat’s hand tightens on hers. “What I’m concerned about is whether Supergirl actually _wants_ me to have them. She could have agreed just to make Carter happy.” Cat’s eyes are boring into her when she looks up. Kara licks her lips and picks her next words carefully.

“She knew what she was getting into when she signed the papers. You might have surprised her in your first interview but Supergirl has grown in the last few months. A lot of that is thanks to you.” Kara tilts her head. Swallows. “Perhaps that is her thank you?”

Cat’s grip on her hand loosens a little. “You should come by this weekend. I’d like you to write up the transcript with me so I can organise them into an article.” She smiles a little. “I will pay you overtime.”

“Oh no, that’s not necessary. I’ll just eat all your food.”

“Making me pay out of pocket?” Cat clicks her tongue. “Diabolical.”

Kara laughs and pushes up onto her feet. She smiles down at Cat for a long moment, not bothering to say anything, and then her phone beeps. Cat looks away and Kara tries not to feel the loss of their shared moment too keenly.

She sighs when she sees Alex’s name on her phone.

“I’m sorry,” Kara says. Cat looks back at her. “I have to go.”

“Big plans for a Friday night?” 

“Not really.” She wiggles her phone between her fingers, flashes the screen towards her boss. “I need to see Alex, that’s all.”

“Alex.”

“My sister. She needs my help with something.”

“Your help,” Cat repeats. She doesn’t sound pleased. “The same sister that had you breaking down in my office last night? The same sister you said hurt you?”

“Well, yes but,”

“It has barely been a day. Ignore her.”

“I can’t.” Cat scoffs and lifts her glass to her lips—it’s empty, though, and she looks very faintly uncomfortable when she lowers it again. Kara knows that she’s just looking out for her, even as strange as that sounds she does know that it’s true. Gently, she says, “With all due respect, Miss Grant, it’s my decision to make.”

“Yes. You’re right. I…apologise.”

Kara guesses at how vulnerable Cat is feeling after the day she’s had and what they’ve shared tonight and she gentles her tone further. “Thank you. For last night. But my sister needs me and I should go.”

“Yes. Have you finished the tasks I asked for?”

“Of course.”

“Then have a good evening. Give your sister my worst,” she adds and the comment makes Kara snort. Cat doesn’t quite smile when she hears it but it’s something close.

“She won’t like that.”

“All the more reason,” Cat insists. She fixes Kara to the spot with a considering look. “Kara. After you’ve dealt with your sister…you’re welcome to come over again tonight. If you would like.”

Kara looks as surprised as Cat feels by the offer.

“I’ll think about it. Thank you, Cat.”

//

“I know you don’t trust me right now,” are the first words out of Alex’s mouth, and Kara sees the uncertainty and the shame and the fear in her eyes and she can’t _stand_ it so she scoops her big sister up in a hug. It’s been a long day—she needs one too. Alex relaxes with a sigh and brings her free hand up to press against Kara’s shoulder. “Hey,” she murmurs.

“Hey. Now tell me what is happening.”

“Okay.” Alex clears her throat and draws back with a nod. “Lord Tech is under attack.”

“Again,” Kara rolls her eyes. “By who?”

“Actually, interestingly enough…” Alex licks her lips. “Your uncle.”

Kara flinches—she reaches her hand out to the railing and grips it tight. Faintly, she hears the metal give under her fingers. “My uncle?” He’s supposed to be overseeing Astra’s passing—he shouldn’t be—he _shouldn’t_ —he _can’t_ be doing this.

“Whoa, whoa, we haven’t actually seen Non,” Alex is quick to say, and Kara sucks in a deep breath. “Just his second hand man and a few others.”

“Okay.” Kara nods. “Okay. Sounds like he got tired of waiting and decided to bend the rules of observation a little.” She sees Vasquez mouth ‘observation’ to Alex and smiles, a little sadly. “The mourning rituals. For Astra.”

“Oh.” Vasquez nods. “I’m sorry, Supergirl. For your loss.” It’s a few weeks late but Kara appreciates it just the same.

“Thank you.” Kara folds her arms over her chest. “I’ll go chase them away.”

“Do that. I’m taking a team in the chopper to join you.” Alex grips her shoulder and squeezes. Hard. “Be careful.”

“You too.”

She flies as fast as she can, the air popping around her in a loud crash that sends a ripple through the space around where she had been and it’s invigorating to push herself like that—just the thing to do before a fight.

Alex was right—Non isn’t there. But his right hand man is and he hovers above Lord Tech and directs his men. There are bodies scattered over the floor and Kara swallows down her horror. _Too late, she was too late, she should have come faster_ —she shakes her thoughts away and crashes her body into his, slamming him into the ground.

“Kara,” he laughs. “You’re too late.”

“Not too late to hurt you,” she grunts and slams her fist into his face.

He gives back as good as he gets and Kara tries to control herself when he flings her away. She doesn’t want to do any more damage to the complex or the people who might still be alive in there. She crashes into him a second time—the sound of them colliding is loud and _violent_ —and she’s winning, she _is_ , but then he laughs and nods somewhere behind her.

“I would release me, if I were you.”

“Yeah, well, you’re _not_ me,” Kara snarls, but she looks over her shoulder anyway. Two of her DEO agents are being held far, far above the ground and the team can’t get off a clean shot. Or save them if—when—they fall.

“He has a message for you, Kara Zor-El,” he says calmly, even as his face purples. She considers letting him choke.

“If Non wants to give me a message, he can tell me himself.”

“He’s mourning the death of his wife, our general.” His face is appropriately sorrowful—Kara tightens her grip. “The wife,” he grunts out, “your sister killed.” He grins when Kara pales.

“What is his message?” Kara asks. The words feel flat on her tongue.

The man pries her fingers away from his throat—somewhere in the distance, Kara can hear Alex barking commands and she wants to fly to her side and take her somewhere, anywhere but here, anywhere that is free of these people who _know_ , who want to _kill_ her sister—and he tears himself out of her hold. “When Myriad is operational, you will know what true pain is,” the man says. “Non will take away those you care for the most and then he will destroy every other person on this planet and you will watch. And then, Kara Zor-El, he will kill you.” He risks moving a little closer—Kara doesn’t even think of attacking him, her whole body feeling like it is filling slowly with lead. “Your sister will be the first,” he promises, and then he shoots up into the sky.

When he is far enough gone that Kara cannot follow, his henchmen release the DEO agents who fall and fall, screaming, and Kara catches them in her arms and lowers them to the ground. They slump, weak-kneed, and press their palms and foreheads against the rough ground.

“Thank you, Supergirl,” one of them says in a voice almost too shaken up for words.

“Of course.”

“ _Kara_ ,” Alex snaps. “What the hell was that?”

“They had our men,” Kara tells her, pointing to them, and the agents stand. Still shaky, but they put their hands on their guns and tell Alex they’re ready to move out again. Ready to chase after the hostiles.

“Bullshit. We would’ve thought of something. You just gave up.”

Kara shakes her head, clenches her jaw shut tight. “Not here.”

Alex’s eyes flicker over Kara and then she nods. “This was a loss. Faheem, take your team and help Maxwell Lord with the clean up. I’ll have another team come from base. You can assign them where they’re needed. I trust your judgement.” Her agent nods and points to five other agents, who jog with him back to the entrance of the lab. “Kara, you’re flying me back to base for debrief. You _are_ going to tell me what happened here.”

“Yeah.” Kara rubs at her forehead and glances around at the mess. She makes a note to fly back over later and help them with the large blocks of rubble. “Okay.” 

 

* * *

It’s late—almost midnight—when she gets Kara’s text.

_Thank you for your help last night, Cat. And for the pancakes._

_You made them._

_True. Then thank you AND you’re welcome._ There is a slight pause—Cat rolls her eyes down at her phone and wonders what she could say next because she does, perhaps, want to continue talking to Kara—and then she gets another message. _Maybe I can come over this weekend? There’s something I’ve been meaning to give Carter._

_A present? From you? I’m glad you didn’t tell him - I would never have been able to get him to sleep._

There is a long wait until the next message, which comes across tinged with guilt. 

_Oops_.

Cat sighs and stands. Switches off her study lamp and makes her way to Carter’s room first. She thinks for a moment that he is asleep, but then his phone buzzes next to his head and the sheets shift.

“Carter,” she says reprovingly. “It’s late.”

“It’s Kara,” he replies, and good god, she can hear his pout.

“Say goodnight and go to sleep. _Now_ , Carter.”

“ _Fine_.” He types a short message and the sheets wriggle and twist as he makes himself comfortable. A hand sneaks out from underneath and places his phone on the nightstand. “Happy?”

“Ecstatic.”

She has another message waiting for her when she reaches her bedroom.

_Shall I tell you if he actually goes to sleep?”_

_No one likes a tattle, Kiera._ Then, quite without consideration, she sends another message. _Are you alright_? She doesn’t answer, so Cat tries again. _Shall I call you_?

_Actually…_

Cat waits for her to continue.

_I’m downstairs. Can I come up?_

Cat blinks in surprise.

_Yes. Of course_.

Kara scuffs a sneaker against the carpet in the front hall. She’s got her hair tied up and glasses on and she’s wearing sweatpants again and a white t-shirt. Cat closes her arms around her own waist—it’s cold, but Kara doesn’t show it at all.

“Bit chilly tonight,” Kara says in lieu of a hello when she sees Cat shiver. She closes the door quickly and lifts her bag a little. “Where can I…?"

“Your room.”

“Thanks.”

That’s all they say for a while—their hushed tones still feel too loud for how late it is, how still it feels—and Kara takes her bag to her guest room and Cat makes her way to the kitchen. She’s been nursing the same glass of scotch for an hour now and she pours one for Kara.

“I thought, y’know, since you offered,” Kara says from the entry to the kitchen. “And because I was coming over anyway. For, for the transcripts, to help,” she says, impossibly awkward, and Cat takes pity on her.

She sets the glass in front of her with a quiet _clink_ and nods to it.

Kara doesn’t even blink—she grabs it and throws it back, swallowing it down. It shouldn’t—but Cat has to bite her lip and she grips her own glass a little more tightly. It’s surprisingly hot to see Kara Danvers down two fingers of scotch.

“Another?”

Kara rolls the glass between her palms. “It’s alright,” she says, but she doesn’t say no so Cat pours her another. This time, Kara savours it as it is meant to be savoured and they stand there for a while, in the kitchen with the lights out.

“Is everything alright with your sister?” Kara sighs. “Ah. Still a touchy subject.”

Kara lifts a shoulder.

They have a good view out the large windows and Kara’s eyes don’t settle once as they sweep from side to side. Cat wonders if she is here because she wants to be or because there is a reason—she places her glass in the sink after finishing it off quickly and she looks over at the other woman.

“Carter,” she starts, and Kara shakes her head.

“He’s okay.”

Neither of them talk about why Cat is asking or how Kara knows.

“Kara,”

“Please,” she interrupts softly, “Don’t send me away.”

Cat’s breath halts in her lungs—she fights against the _never_ that struggles free—and her eyes burn as she tries to imprint the way Kara looks on the backs of her eyes—she is hunched and miserable and quiet and _small_ in the dark of her home. And even so, flecks of light illuminate her. Even so, there is some restrained strength in the way she grips her glass. Even so, she is looking at Cat with eyes wide and vulnerable and _pleading_ and Cat cannot look away.

“No,” she whispers. “I won’t.” Kara’s eyes flutter closed and Cat continues. “I was going to say, I have work I want to do tomorrow.” She guesses that Kara will not be sleeping, from the way the woman has been hoarding the last few drops of her drink, making them last overly long, and she says, “Make yourself at home.” She suspects that otherwise, Kara would stand in the centre of her kitchen the whole night long.

“Thank you. Sleep well.”

“You as well.”


	11. Chapter 11

Cat sighs into her morning coffee—it’s her second cup of the day and the machine is loud enough, very loud actually, to have woken anyone within three floors. So it cannot be a good thing, she thinks, that Kara is still asleep. _Deeply_ asleep. 

Here she is, laying on Cat’s uncomfortable couch. One hand slung across her stomach and the other with fingertips just brushing the carpet. She’s messy from head to toe—hair half out of its tie, glasses crooked, socked feet hanging just off the end of the couch, shirt thoroughly wrinkled—and Cat sighs again. 

Kara looks tired. 

Cat tilts her head, taps a slow, considering finger against the lip of her mug. Then she takes a long pull of the drink—terrible stuff, barely better than instant frozen crud, but she forgets how to use the good machine before her third cup—and lets the caffeine, or its placebo affect at least, buzz through her and kick her brain into action. 

She’s never seen Kara sleep before. Part of her is surprised. She wasn’t sure that Kara did sleep. But here she is, Cat thinks again, and if she had ever thought of Kara in bed— _asleep_ —she had thought that Kara would be one of those people who smiles. Who dreams pleasant dreams of puppies and flowers and yet she looks sad and old and tired. The tired doesn’t come as a surprise. Kara had only stopped pacing the entire length of the apartment around three in the morning. 

Cat knows this because she couldn’t sleep either.

Kara’s energy spilt on over to her, keeping her awake. In the early hours of the morning she had imagine, when the lack of sleep got to her, the sound of a tigers tail snapping behind the other woman as she paced. The image of Kara all bunched muscles, caged nerves, power contained by clenched white teeth and clenched white knuckles, a growl in her throat. Eyes golden and wide. 

She’s drawn out of her musings when Carter creeps up next to her, quiet in his socked feet.

He scratches at his nose, sighs into his orange juice, and tilts his head down at Kara in a look complete with a fond little smile and concerned dark eyes. 

Cat reaches over and wraps an arm around his shoulders. 

“What are we going to do about this?” she asks him, very quietly, and he leans into her side. 

After a minute, Carter shrugs her hand away. She lets it fall. She’s surprises when he snags her, takes her hand and pulls her into her own study. 

Carter pulls her office chair around from behind the desk and rolls it closer to the couch, where he sits. He curls into the corner and pulls a pillow onto his lap. His fingers twist at the corner of the pillow. 

Cat makes a note to be quiet, to speak softly and slowly, to turn on the subtitles for him when he goes to watch TV later. She’s not surprised. With school picking up and all the excitement of Supergirl, and of Kara staying over and his big assignments starting, Carter must be feeling out of sorts by now. He is making an effort this morning, though Cat can tell that he’s on edge—he’s too still and he won’t look her in the eyes—and Cat is so proud of him. Always. She is _always_ proud of him—but today she looks at him with a whole new days worth of pride. 

He opens his mouth, then frowns. Twists the corner of the pillow roughly. 

“Carter, do you want to talk?” His lips press tightly closed. “Out loud?” Carter shakes his head no quickly. “Alright. My phone is here, you can text me if you want.”

He tugs at the corner of the pillow. Then he wriggles his phone out of his pocket, holds it for a moment then drags in a deep breath and nods. 

_you’re invested_

That’s all his message says and Cat purses her lips thoughtfully. 

“Invested?” she asks, softly. Not too loud. She can do without answers—she doesn’t want to see him upset. But he’s fine, he keeps his eyes on his phone and doesn’t look up. 

_you like her_

_i like kara a lot. she’s really important to me_

_i want you to like her too_

“She’s been my assistant for years, Carter. I think I was invested first.”

_no_

“No?”

_she’s been kiera for years_

_she’s MY kara first_

“Your Kara?” Cat crosses her legs at the knees and leans back into her chair. Carter flushes a light pink all the way down his neck, under his sleep shirt—he looks nice in green, she notes, and makes a decision to buy him some more clothes in green—and Cat smirks.

_you know what i mean_

He pulls his knees up and buries his face in the pillow—his flush intensifies when Cat laughs, a low friendly laugh that Carter has always associated with his fondest memories. Her Carter laugh. He’s never heard it directed at anyone else. It’s a laugh just for him—he loves his mother, he _loves_ her, he knows that she doesn’t show the soft, kind, nerdy parts of herself to very many people or her joy or her frustration or disappointment or sadness and he’s proud that he gets to see it. She’s an intensely private and proud woman and every day she assures him again of how proud she is of _him_ and how much she loves _him_ and he is protective of her but, if there were one person he would be willing to share her with, he thinks it would be Kara. And not because he wants to spend time with Kara—though he does, and with the Supergirl part of her too, of course—but because sometimes when they are together the world goes still for a moment and that is a hard thing to find in this busy, busy world that his mother has made for herself. She looks at Kara like she is precious, and strange, and welcome— _wanted_ —and Carter knows that it is a rare and wonderful thing. 

He wonders if they know what they have. 

_is she important to you?_

Carter looks up this time—his blush is gone and his eyes are intent. He doesn’t keep eye contact with her but now and again his eyes will lift to hers and she can see the effort it takes him. Her smile fades and she gives him the same attention back. Slowly, she lifts her coffee cup and sips—it’s almost empty and it’s getting cold. 

“Yes,” she says finally. “She’s important to me.” He smiles a knowing little smile and Cat narrows her eyes. “As you know, apparently.” He shrugs but his smile grows to _smug_. Cat rolls her eyes. 

They sit for a while. Cat sets her mug to the side—it’s thoroughly cold now—and Carter drags the blanket from the back of the couch and pulls it over his feet. Carter messages her again. 

_i heard her walking around last night_

_for hours_

“Yes. I did as well.”

_is she okay?_

“I’m not sure yet.” Cat reaches out, pauses before she touches him, and she smiles when he leans into her hand. She smoothes down his curls and rests her hand on his shoulder. “Today, I think we go easy on her.”

_no sending her out for coffee_

“Unfortunately not. But also,” she says, narrowing her eyes and cupping his chin, “no asking her to rearrange your bedroom furniture because you’ve had a whim.”

_i think it’ll look better_

“Another time, Carter,” she says sternly. He shrugs. “Another time. Kara will be happy to help you, I’m sure.” Carter smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “In fact, I’m sure she’ll be _thrilled_. She has that whole small town sweetness. Wide-eyed at any display of power, honest. Sickeningly kind. Smiles far too often,” Cat says, rolling her eyes. “It’s appalling.” 

Carter laughs, a little breath out his nose. 

_you don’t mean that_

“I do.”

_you don’t. sometimes when she brings you coffee you watch her leave_

_and you like it when she smiles_

“Carter!” 

There is a timid knock at the study door and Cat freezes. Can Kara read Carter’s texts through a door? She doesn’t know, she’s not sure. Kara knocks again. 

“Cat? I’m sorry, uh, I can come back?”

Carter is smiling at Cat, eyes bright and amused—apparently all he needs today to meet her eyes is her impending humiliation. 

“Come in, Kara,” she says, and shoots a warning look at Carter. 

The door swings open and Kara—honestly, Cat shouldn’t have worried at all, Kara isn’t looking up from the floor let alone trying to spy—shuffles her feet a little and leans into the room, keeps half her body hidden behind the wall.

“Can I make you breakfast?” she asks, still not looking up, and Cat frowns. She exchanges a look with Carter. He looks worried too. 

“Kara. Are you alright?”

Kara’s head snaps up and her eyes, red-rimmed, meet Cat’s. Cat feels her heart rate pick up in sympathy—what’s wrong? what’s going on? is she hurt?—but then Kara nods. 

“I’m alright. Breakfast?”

_cereal_

Cat glances down at her phone and nods. “Yes, thank you Carter. Cereal, Kara. Top shelf on the—”

“Oh, yeah, I know where it is. The chocolate one?”

“That would be the one.” Cat can’t even pretend to be surprised that Kara knows the food in her house. “A bowl for Carter.” She considers for a moment and her phone buzzes. She has a feeling she knows what it will say and from the corner of her eye she can see Carter’s lips turn upwards. She ignores it. Kara is blinking at her sleepily and just waiting for her word—Cat smiles. “One for me as well. If you don’t mind,” she says, and Kara beams. 

“Not at all. Back in a sec.”

Carter is insufferable—silent, but insufferable with a silly little grin—and Cat chances a look down at her phone.

_you’re staring_

She can’t think of a single thing to say back to him and he knows it. 

Kara is back soon. Cat finally thinks of something to say. 

“I thought you said you would only be a second?”

“Well, I, that’s,” Kara snorts, laughs awkwardly. “That’s just a, something that people say. A phrase—a figure of speech.” Cat raises her eyebrows. “You know?”

“No. I don’t know, Kiera. You said you would only take a second.”

“I…I’m sorry?” Kara is frozen in the doorway, balancing three bowls in her hands. “I…don’t know what you want me to do.” Her phone buzzes in her pocket and Kara looks between Cat and the bowls and her pocket and her smile falters. “Umm.”

“Kara, I’m joking.” Cat stands smoothly from her seat—she revels in the way that Kara’s eyes drop from her face down to her legs, and in the blush that heats up her cheeks when she realises what she’s done. She relieves Kara of one of the bowls. She knows that it’s hers—it’s made exactly the way she likes it, which makes her smile since she can guess that she’s only asked Kara for cereal twice, maybe three times, in their two years together—and when she’s lifted it out of Kara’s hand, the other woman pulls her phone out of her pocket. 

“Um. Oh,” she beams at her phone. It looks mostly real, if a little tired. “Good morning, Carter. Breakfast of champions. Well,” she grins and kneels next to him, hands him one bowl and puts the other on the table next to him. “It’s mostly sugar.” That pulls a smile and then he frowns. “What’s wrong?” He holds his hand out, open palm. “I—oh! Spoon!”

He barely has time to think about blinking and then a spoon is being laid in his hand. A strand of hair flutters gently down to her cheek. Carter’s fingers shake a little as he closes them around the spoon and Kara gives him a smile. 

“Did you just…?” he whispers, and her smile grows. She doesn't answer, just smiles, and shoots to standing. 

“Cat.” She hands her a spoon as well. Cat takes it with a suspicious look, glancing over at her son who holds his spoon in awe. 

“Thank you.” 

Kara nods and hesitates, glancing to the door. Carter pats the seat next to him and Kara shakes her head and sinks cross legged down onto the floor—either because she knows that Carter needs his space right now or because she just wants to sit on the floor—but she does take the blanket from Carter with a smile when he offers it. “Thank you, Carter.” 

They sit for a while—Cat notices that Carter’s cereal, too, is exactly as he likes it. Half and half, more or less, of milk and cereal, with a little side bowl of extra so he can add more as he goes. He must have told her how he took his breakfast at some point. Or maybe Kara just paid attention. Either way, Cat’s heart throbs a little, her smile grows a touch too wide, and tears prick at her eyes. Kara takes care of them. Kara _loves_ Carter. Enough that she sees him. Understands him. A mistake with his food on a day when he feels like this—a little uncomfortable, uncomfortably on the cusp of what Carter likes to call A Mood—could have been a minor disaster and Cat is relieved that Kara is exactly who she is. 

Kara loops an arm around her bent knees and yawns until her jaw clicks. She rubs at her eyes hard. 

“Sleep well?”

“Not really.” Kara leans forward, yawns again. She rests her forehead on a knee and adjusts the blanket with small tugs so it drapes over her shoulders. “No offence, your couch is awful.”

“Mm. Yes.”

“A torture just for your mom?”

Cat smiles when Carter flushes. “Perhaps. The couch _is_ a study in appearance versus comfort. Particularly apt, don’t you think?” she murmurs. Kara rolls her head to the side so that Cat can see her smile, an agreement. 

“I’m falling asleep,” Kara warns. True to her word, between one yawn and the next, she’s out. 

Cat just raises her eyebrows when Carter catches her looking at Kara with undisguised affection. 

//

Kara wakes to her blanket tucked carefully around her sides. There’s a pillow under her head as well and the curtains have been pulled open so the sun streams directly down onto her. There is a beam cast right onto her palm and her hand twitches and curls as if around the gold light. It feels lovely. 

She stretches languidly, groaning as her joints pop and she really focuses on and feels the warmth on her skin and the delicious stretch of muscle. Sitting upright, she pushes her hands up and over her head and hums happily.

“Oh.” 

The word is breathed out, very softly, and Kara doubts that she would have heard it at all if not for her powers. She twists to look over her shoulder. 

Cat is sitting at her desk. Staring at her, rapt. 

“Hi,” Kara murmurs. And she remembers how Cat had let her in the night before and how Cat had looked at her and it was…she doesn’t quite know what it was, it was entirely new to her, but she likes it. Cat’s doing it again now. But this time, Cat is blushing and she looks thoughtful as well, a finger touched to her lips very gently. “What time is it?”

“Breakfast time, for you. Your stomach has been making itself heard for the last hour.”

On cue, Kara’s stomach growls and she grimaces. 

“Sorry.”

“Mhm. Shoo.” Cat points to the door. “Come back only when you are ready to work. We have a lot to do,” she says. Looking away when Kara stands—and stretches, hands raised high above her head and shirt riding up an inch—Cat moves her papers around a little so when Kara passes by her desk to leave, she can easily make out the title. 

INTERVIEW WITH SUPERGIRL - NOTES

Kara stares down at it for a moment. She remembers Non’s threat from the night before. _He will take away those you care for the most_ —Kara yanks her eyes away from the pages, black ink swirling on the page, _Supergirl_ looking so much like a taunt or yet another threat, and her eyes lift to meet Cat’s. She’s looking at her steadily and Kara’s lips tremble. 

“Right.” 

Revealing herself and then revealing the danger she’s put Cat—and oh Rao, _Carter—_ into. 

Her stomach clenches uncomfortably and she decides to leave breakfast until after she’s showered and dressed. 

She ducks out of the room—Cat’s eyes follow her the whole way, she can feel them—and she takes her time to get ready. Super speed is all well and good but Cat’s showers have insane pressure and they never seem to run cold and every single product in the shower smells _amazing_. Kara is sure that it’s all wildly expensive but she can’t find it in her heart to care. Her apartment shower has thready, weak pressure—the DEO showers are always just on the edge of cool. So this, this is heaven. She only steps out of the shower once her stomach is growling almost non-stop and her knees are a little weak from hunger and the weight of water-logged skin. 

Carter watches as she makes a single sandwich and struggles to finish half. He’s moved a bundle of blankets and pillow to the living room floor and he’s nestled into it with his homework. She paces. He watches. 

Kara’s phone buzzes. 

_are you okay?_

Kara nods.

_you don't have to lie to me_

_I’ll talk to you later_ , she texts him back. _I promise_

He watches her for a few more minutes, then nods. 

_are you going to talk to mom about being supergirl?_

“I’m not—“ she says with a laugh and Carter adjusts his blankets, shrugs. “I’m not!” Carter _sighs._ Kara leaves her plate in the kitchen and drops onto the couch behind him. She shuffles a bit to get comfortable and tugs a pillow to her chest. “I should tell her, huh?” He nods. “How do you think she’ll handle it?”

Carter props his notebook where she can see it. 

_she’ll be fine_ , he writes. 

“I—do you want me to write or is okay if I talk?”

_talking is okay_

“Okay. Cool.” Kara sighs. “How do you _really_ think she’ll handle it. I lied to her, y’know? I made her think I wasn’t…her.”

_Supergirl?_

“Yeah.”

Carter frowns, taps the end of his pen against the paper. He scrawls a little super crest on his page. _Do you really think that mom believed you?_

“I was pretty believable.” Carter rolls his eyes. “Hey! I was!”

_well she knows now. but you still have to tell her_

“Just like that?” Kara asks and he nods. “Sure. Right, of course. Totally, I can totally do that, I can _totally_ do that.” Carter opens his maths textbook. “I can do that no problem. No problemo. Winn,” she laughs, “would say easy peasy lemon squeezy.” Carter sighs heavily and makes sure that she’s watching as he starts working on his first question. “I’ll go…do that then,” Kara says and he nods.

Carter doesn’t look up again—she walks very slowly over to the kitchen, sneaking a few looks back at him and he hunches further over his book. 

“ _Fine_. I’m _going_.” She grabs up the rest of her sandwich and, with one last hopeful look over her shoulder at Carter, she makes her way to Cat’s study. She sucks in a breath and, gathering her courage up in both hands, raps very softly on the door. “Cat? Can I come in?”

Cat waves Kara in. She’s absorbed in her reading of Carter’s notes so she just points to her spare computer where a new pack of earphones are waiting for Kara, still in their packaging.

Kara gets to work. 

It takes a minute to set everything up and she hesitates before she begins but there is no going back—not that she _wants_ to go back, really, she does want to tell Cat because Cat has been a guiding force, a mentor, a friend, and…and Kara just _wants_ to tell her. 

Cat looks up from her papers and catches Kara’s gaze. “Problem?”

“No,” Kara says, shaking her head. 

“Good. Chop chop, Kiera.”

Kara grins and presses play. 

Her nose scrunches when she hears her own voice—is that really what she sounds like?—but she dutifully types a transcript as she listens. At five times the speed. 

“Done already?” Cat remarks when Kara takes her earphones out. “How utterly unsurprising.” She makes a note and turns the page she’s working on.

Kara’s heart flutters in her chest. Sunlight is streaming in through the window against Cat’s back, lighting up around her like a halo, and it’s not a _sign_ but it feels like one. This is the moment. This is it. No going back. 

“Miss Grant,”

“Strange,” Cat murmurs, flicking through the pages on her desk. “For a moment there I thought someone was calling me Miss Grant even though I have expressly told her to call me Cat while we’re in my home…”

“ _Cat,”_ Kara corrects herself, quickly and quite obviously obligingly. Cat can tell that she isn’t paying attention. Not really. Kara closes the lid of the laptop and shifts in her seat so she’s facing Cat straight on. “I, there is something I should tell you.” She folds her hands in her lap, clenching them hard into fists. Her knee bounces. “There’s, I,” Cat looks up from her pages and, seeing Kara’s distress, puts everything down. “Oh Rao,” Kara whispers. She stands and paces the small room. She shakes her hands, shaking out the tension. “I…"

Cat doesn’t help. She drinks her coffee—her fourth of the morning—and watches Kara pace. 

“You?”

“Yes. Me, I… See, when you said… I was, it wasn’t that I wanted to, I just… The thing _is_ ,” she says, and she stops still and slams her eyes shut. Sighs. “Rao, this is hard. Okay, I’m just going to say it. I’m just going to come out and _say_ it.” 

Cat’s lips twitch upwards. This is Kara, through and through, and through she had dreamt up a hundred scenarios of how this might happen, this one is _real_. Kara turns quickly to face her and marches up to the desk and looks Cat right in the eyes. She folds her arms—hands still shaking a little—over her chest and nods.

“I’m Supergirl.”

Cat stares up at her for a long minute.

“Oh my god.” Kara pales. “You didn’t know? I thought you _knew_. Cat, I, that—“

She stops, frozen by a single raised finger. 

Cat waits to make sure that her babbling has stopped and then she flips through Carter’s notes to the last page. She takes her time—longer than necessary, Kara is sure of it. When she’s found it, she holds it out until Kara unfolds her arms and takes it. 

Takes it, in two trembling hands. Reading the note, Kara laughs. A small, nervous laugh and then something far more genuine. 

_In conclusion_ , Carter has written neatly at the bottom of the page, _Kara is Supergirl_. 

“Dammit, Carter.”

“He has compiled a _very_ impressive evaluation of your vocabulary and syntax and cross-examined it with Supergirl’s. That, and your physical similarities and identical moral anchors.” Cat takes the page back from Kara. “It’s one thing to see it written down,” Cat tells her, “and quite another to _hear_ it.”

Kara nods. 

“I knew, of course,” Cat continues. She smiles a smug smile and nods, pointing a finger at Kara. At her chest, like she can see that S there. “My secret weapon. My guardian angel,” she says with a delighted twinkle in her eyes. Kara smiles. 

“Of course. You knew, without a shadow of a doubt?”

Cat sniffs. Pushes her hair back over her shoulders. “I had a _minute_ of doubt, perhaps.”

“A minute? I had you fooled!”

“No, you used some kind of alien trickery, which isn’t the same thing. And I suspected you regardless. It was some _awfully_ convenient timing.” Kara smiles. “My coffee is suddenly hot all the time, you hear things you shouldn’t be able to hear, you’re gone at all hours of the day, you are _flown away_ by _Bizarro_ and not a scratch on you but _no_ ,” Cat says, rolling her eyes. “Not Supergirl, not you.”

Kara can’t stop her smile. She must look like a fool, her wide smile fixed in place—it feels invincible, nothing can stop her from smiling, she feels so relieved that Cat finally knows that she can’t force it away. 

“I’m sorry I lied to you,” she says, because she owes Cat that. 

“Yes, well.” Cat taps her computer awake. “It’s unfortunate that you felt you couldn’t tell me but like I said, I already knew.”

Kara frowns. So much for an invincible smile. “Felt I couldn’t… Cat, it’s not really my secret to tell.” She reads Cat’s confused face correctly and sits, leans forward, hurries to explain. After a moments hesitation, she reaches out for Cat’s hand—Cat stares down at the fingers that touch lightly to the back of her hand, but she doesn’t move away. “It’s not just me. My sister, my friends, my family. They’re all involved in my being Supergirl. I can’t just tell anyone I want.”

“And especially not me.”

“I,”

“You can tell _Lucy Lane_ but you can’t tell me.”

“Lucy,” Kara laughs nervously, pulls her hand back to touch her glasses. “Lucy came to me, she was upset, I had to tell her.”

“I confronted you sleepless and irritated.”

“You’re always sleepless and irritated,” Kara points out teasingly, not noticing the risk in that until it’s too late and she smiles to soften it but Cat still narrows her eyes. 

“Hmm.”

Kara grins down at her hands—her smile falters after a moment. Cat knows that she’s Supergirl, but she doesn’t know what that means: flying, yes, saving people, yes, bulletproof, _yes_ , but also—fighting constant fighting, winning, _losing,_ putting her family her friends in danger, learning things she’d never wanted to know about her mother, feeling anger burn too hot in her head until it feels like she’s going to explode, and this numbing creeping knowledge that nothing she ever does is going to be enough because this world is a big place and her shoulders are only so wide. 

She doesn’t know how to tell her.

She buys herself some time. 

“What are you going to do?” she asks, staring over Cat’s shoulder. She doesn’t tell the other woman that she is looking right through the wall, out past the building, past the city, sweeping the line of buildings. 

“Do?”

“Now that you know about me. About Supergirl.”

“ _Well_ ,” Cat says with undeniable relish, and she straightens in her seat with a pleased wriggle. “I was thinking a three— _no—_ a _five_ piece series on Krypton.” 

Kara smiles. She would be horrified by that if she didn’t know that Cat isn’t being serious. Or—Cat _is_ being serious, but Kara knows that this isn’t final, that they can and will talk about it, that this is as far as it will go unless Kara says otherwise. 

“I know you enjoyed talking about it and Lane will positively _gag_ when I get my hands on something she can’t.” She closes her eyes—blows a breath slowly out her nose, pushes her hands out wide against her desk and lowers her chin to her chest. She hums happily. Kara thinks maybe that Cat is… _thrilled_ is a light word for it. Cat’s pupils are blown wide when she looks up at Kara. “Why is that, by the way?”

“Kal was a baby,” Kara reminds her, feeling a little distant. Mind elsewhere, eyes still skimming the skyline, she feels in two parts and some hazy, cottonball gap between the two keeping her from settling.

“And you?”

“I was thirteen.” She remembers the utterly soft fabric of her dress, the heat of her planet, the way her father smelled when she pressed her nose into his shoulder. Her mothers arms wrapped around her, a kiss pressed hard and desperate against her forehead. The last kiss ever. 

Cat nods, flips through the pages in front of her. “Hmm, yes. You did tell Carter that. How did you escape?”

“Umm.” Kara blinks, focuses on the other woman for a moment. Her pen shines silver. “There was a pod. My parents sent me away to look after Kal.” She can see her mother in front of her—she sees her every night recently, sometimes she sees her when she closes her eyes, Krypton destroyed a second time and she’s afraid that she will use up her memory that her mothers face will blur. Eliza had shown her some of her old photographs, once upon a time, and Kara is afraid sometimes that her memory will follow suit—that the sharp lines of her mothers cheeks and jaw and the delicate curl of her hair, the slopes and planes of her neck and collar, arms that held her tight, a stomach she rested her head on and slept till morning, her body a familiar landscape—the landscape of a _home_ she knows is long gone—she is afraid these memories will soften with age as ink will seep into paper and fade and fade and her memories will turn into so much red dust. She strokes a finger over her drop necklace. “When Krypton died, the shock wave hit my pod off course. It slipped into the Phantom Zone—it’s this place where time stands still,” Kara tells her and Cat blinks. “I was there for twenty five years.”

“Twe—” Cat turns her pen in her hands, twists the cap off. Clicks it back on. “Were you awake for any of that?”

“Bits and pieces.” Kara shrugs and gives her a shy smile. “I remember waking up when the pod activated.” She shivers. “It was cold. And _dark._ And then I must have fallen asleep again because the next thing I know, I’m here on Earth. And my cousin was…” Cat is looking at her with surprisingly soft eyes. Kara’s breath catches—she thought that Cat would look more shrewd, more scheming. But this…Kara guesses that this is the difference made when Cat is listening to _her_. Kara and Supergirl, not Supergirl alone. The realisation is striking. “Um.” She falters for a moment. “Um, Kal, my cousin was—he didn’t need me.”

“And you landed at thirteen and all alone,” Cat surmises. “Carter’s age. I’m sorry. I can’t imagine…”

“He will never have to know what it feels like,” Kara swears fiercely. Then she remembers that she can’t actually promise that—she can’t promise that Carter will be safe, she can’t promise that anyone will be safe, she can’t promise a damn thing. “I need to talk to you.”

“So talk.”

“It’s about Monday.”

Cat clicks her tongue immediately, annoyed, and narrows her eyes. “ _Really_ , Kiera? Must I reassure you about everything?” She _heaves_ a sigh. “Very well. Your identify is safe, your job is safe, provided you continue to do it well, of course. I won’t hesitate to fire you if you slip. I didn’t think I would have to tell you that I find it quite pleasing that I have a literal superhero at my beck and call. You don’t get to where I am, Kiera, without a healthy enjoyment of power plays.” When Cat realises that Kara is just staring at her, she stops. “You weren’t talking about your job.”

“No.”

“Then what is it?”

“Something is about to happen,” she tells Cat, and her eyes return to the wall and beyond and she doesn’t see Cat’s eyes widen—it is one thing to know that Kara is Supergirl, it is another to be told, and it is quite another to hear Supergirl’s voice coming from the soft, pastel-wearing Kara. 

“I _do_ so enjoy ambiguity, Kiera.”

Kara smiles at that. “I’m sorry. I don’t know a lot about it. They call it Myriad.”

“They?” Cat asks. “Myriad?”

“I don’t know what it is yet.” Kara feels _shame_ settle around her shoulders heavier than her cape and she leans forward, braces her elbows against her knees. “I don’t know.” Kara can feel the weight of Cat’s gaze, too, heavy. Considering and focused. “I don’t know,” she says a third time, but that’s not the whole truth. The whole truth is, “The end of the world, I think.”

“The end of the world.”

“We’re working—we’re _trying_ to figure it out.” Kara gives a bitter little laugh. “My sister is. And Max. And Winn. They’re trying to figure it out. I’ve been sent to _wait._ ”

“Kara—” Cat stops when Kara shakes her head. 

“It’s fine. It’s fine, I know how it goes. It’s just frustrating.” She laughs again and her smile is a small twist of her lips. Upwards, yes, but not convincing. “All I can really do is beat up aliens. I just wish there was a way I could help _before_ it gets to end of the world levels.”

“I understand.” Kara nods. Cat knows she does understand—but sometimes the saying of a thing helps more than even a mutual understanding. “When the news finally gets to me and I can finally do something about it, it’s already over. I report _after_ someone has been shot, _after_ a bank has been robbed _, after_ the battle has been won.”

“You know it’s important, though. You _know_ that, right?”

“Of course.” Cat waves a hand. “I didn’t tell you that to be pitied, Kiera. I told you because there are things even I, as successful and talented and intelligent as I am, cannot do. I am not a soldier or a doctor. I am a journalist. And what I do is everything that I can. I donate my considerable wealth to people who _can_ help and I use my name and my face and my words to influence peoples minds and deeds. Are there days when that doesn’t feel like it’s enough?” She shrugs delicately. “Of course.”

“How do you do it? How do you get past it?”

“I pour myself a drink and I get back to work.” Cat smiles. “So. Would you like a drink, Kara?”

“I—yes,” Kara says. “I would.”

They spend a few minutes in silence. Cat stands and makes her way over to the fine bookshelf that makes up a whole wall of her study—it’s made of a dark wood and relatively plain, but it is smooth and strong and she’s had it and many of the books living on it since she was very young. The glass decanter clinks softly against her glass, and then Kara’s, and she picks up Kara’s glass in her hand and walks it over to her. Kara sits back in her chair and takes it with a smile, tilting her chin up to Cat. Cat holds onto the glass a moment longer.

It would be easy, Cat knows, to lean over and press a kiss down onto those waiting lips. Kara would let her. 

She doesn’t do it.

"Thank you," Kara says, when Cat releases the glass. 

Cat nods. She places her hand on the backrest of Kara’s chair, steps in until her thighs are pressed against the arm of it, and stares down at Kara. Cat drinks slowly—Kara mimics her. They are close. Cat doesn’t want to move away, so she doesn’t. Instead, she asks, “Why do you feel so strongly about this battle?”

Kara drinks again.

"My mother stopped him once," she says, and she casts a look out the windows again. Cat waits. "He was trying to stop them from destroying Krypton but my mother stopped him —he was _hurting_ people and she had a job and I don’t know if she was right,” Kara admits, “but I know that she couldn’t let him get away with killing people. She sent him to prison and now he’s here and he won’t stop until this planet is safe.”

“But not the people on it,” Cat deduces. 

“To him, humans are a disease,” Kara says. The words feel bitter and unpleasant in her mouth—she cannot comprehend them, she is flooded with the faces and names of humans who have loved her and who she has loved and lived with and saved. “He will kill everyone before he lets you kill your planet.”

“Our planet? _Your_ planet too, Kara.”

Kara smiles. “Yes,” she agrees. A small, sad part of her says _no_. 

“So. This man. He has a plan. To end the world?"

“Yes. Something big. They’ve installed something in Max’s satellites, that’s why he’s helping us. Alex says that he found something in the code so they’re trying to figure out what it is. Anything that will give us an advantage—“ Kara shakes her head. “It’s not even an advantage. We’re just looking for anything that will help us figure out what their plan is.”

“And then you’ll defeat him.”

“I’ll try.” Kara leans her head back, close to where Cat’s hand is resting. Close enough to touch. “It’s hard when they have all the same powers as I do. And he has nothing, no care for this world, to hold him back from destroying it all.” Her voice is quiet and sad and Cat reaches out then to smooth her fingers over a single lock of that gold hair. Kara gives no indication that she felt it. 

Cat waits. She has always been very good at knowing when someone has something more to say. 

“Do you know why I come to your balcony?”

It’s not what Cat expected to hear, but she lets it play out. “Because I’m there, of course.”

“Yes,” she smiles. “But you also have the best view of the city.”

“The view?”

“I can hear so much from your balcony. I feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be. Right in the middle, right in the heart of it all.” Kara hesitates. Then, softly, she says, “You are, you know.”

“I am what?”

“The heart of the city.” Kara’s smile feels like sunrise to Cat—expected, but as surprising and beautiful as always. The corners of her eyes crinkle with the force of it. Kara leans her head, traps Cat’s fingers—which have been smoothing down that lock of hair, and Cat had tricked herself into thinking that Kara hadn’t noticed but of course, of course she _had_ but she had let Cat do it regardless and now her fingers are caught. “You’re in touch with all these people, all these stories, and you deal with everything with so much care.” Kara smiles again. “I’m always in awe.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not just a safe place, it’s…” Kara frowns, considering. Cat itches to smooth out the furrow between her eyebrows. “You’re a symbol. An inspiration, every bit as much as,” she taps her chest, fingers twitch in an approximation of an S. “You, CatCo, you let people know that things don’t have to be bad or hopeless, that they can look up the sky and search for me or for the sun or the stars. But you’ve also taught them that they can look out for themselves and for each other. That good is still good, whether its me putting out a fire or someone returning a, a lost wallet.” Kara knows how cheesy it all sounds and her nose crinkles a little. She laughs a little self-consciously but Cat doesn’t seem to register it—she’s still staring down at Kara, mouth very slightly agape. “Anyway, I just wanted to thank you. And let you know that whatever happens on Monday, I want you to know that I appreciate everything you have done for me, for the city.”

Cat’s recovery is lightning quick. “I’ll tell you what you’re going to do, Kara.” She takes Kara’s glass—empty now—and her own and walks them back to the little sink in her bookcase bar. She speaks to the wall when she says, “You’re going to put on your suit and if he means to hurt people, you will stop him.”

She doesn’t hear Kara move, but she isn’t surprised when she sees her step up to just behind her right shoulder. 

“And if I can’t?” Kara asks her, low and serious.

“There is no _can’t_. You will.” Cat turns to face her. “I—we can talk about this later.” Kara’s eyes shadow over a little and Cat can tell that she doesn’t believe her. “But for now, it’s lunch time and Carter is waiting for us.”

“Oh.” Kara cocks her head to the side. “He’s coming this way. How did you know?”

“Not all of us have super powers, Kiera. But some of us do have our secrets,” she says with a smile. She pushes off the bookcase and makes her way to the door. Or, she starts to. Kara shifts slightly until she’s in Cat’s way—easy to step around, if Cat wants to, but she looks at the set of Kara’s jaw and the worry in her eyes and she stops. “It’s not a big secret that he has a set routine,” she teases. 

Kara allows her a smile. They both know that’s not why Kara stopped her. 

“We _will_ have to talk about this later,” she says. 

Cat presses her lips together tight. Kara doesn’t move when Carter knocks on the door—her eyes are intent and Cat looks between her and the door quickly. 

“One moment, Carter.” She lowers her voice. “Later, Kara. I promise. Trust me.”

She does.

* * *

“So what’s my present?” Carter asks after they’ve eaten.

Kara jerks her head up and back into the conversation—she’s been frowning down at her phone for most of lunch, texting someone—and she smiles. “Dude. You’re going to lose your _mind_.” She sounds a little like Winn for a moment, but she can’t help it. His enthusiasm about the gifts, about her idea, was contagious and fun and she’s always liked the way her friend’s words have felt when she repeats them. “Hold on, let me get them for you.”

Carter groans when she walks _infuriatingly_ slowly to put her plate in the sink and then down the hall to the guest room. 

“Kara, come _on_ ,” he calls, and her only answer is a light laugh.

“Okay.” She returns with two small metal boxes. “This one,” she peeks into it and grins, passes it to Carter, “this one is yours. And, Cat?” She holds out the other to Cat, who lowers her fork and dabs at the corners of her lips with her napkin before she takes it. 

Carter holds his present carefully, awed, and a thought occurs to him. “Will you take me flying again?” he asks.

Kara folds her arms over her stomach and laughs. “What? I can’t—” She laughs again, an awkward sound. “Fly. Right. Yeah.”

“Not used to people knowing?” Carter guesses with a grin.

“Not used to people knowing and being so excited,” she admits. “I mean. Winn? Sometimes? But he tries to be cool about it. He doesn’t ask a lot about my, y’know.”

“Powers.”

“That. Those, yes.” Kara fiddles with her glasses, ducking her head. “But, uh, you should open your present, Carter!”

He nods quickly and his fingers scrabble to pull the watch from its box. Kara notices that Cat has clicked her own present down onto the counter, content to watch Carter open his first, and she leans in over his shoulder to see what it is. 

“Oh _cool_.” He turns it over, examining every inch of it. “This is cool. Does it have gadgets? Poison gas? Freeze dart? Trip wire?”

“I’m a superhero, not a spy,” Kara laughs. “So no to all of those.” She takes it from him and slips it over his wrist, tightening it until he nods. “This does two things. One, it’s a normal watch so it tells the time.” He grins. “And two, if you are ever in danger, press this.” She presses a button on the side of the watch and sees with a little thrill that Carter’s eyes widen and his breath catches—the face of the watch flips up and displays a small glowing red super crest.

She had asked Winn if they could make something a little less on the nose but he had scoffed. “ _Carter will be totally_ thrilled _when he sees this, Kara, trust me. The crest is like, the coolest thing about your costume. He doesn’t know about the tri-layered super strength polymers I designed which personally I think are the coolest so the crest will have to do._ ”

Judging from Carter’s quiet awe, Winn had been right. 

She closes the lid and runs her thumb over it, making sure that it’s closed.

“ _Thank_ you,” he whispers, reverent. 

“You can keep it so long as you promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“Stay safe. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

He grins. “I promise.” Carter twists in his seat and throws his hand out to show his mom the watch. She ooh’s and ah’s appropriately and then Carter pushes her own gift towards her eagerly. “Open it! Is it a watch too?” he asks, turning back to Kara.

“No. I didn’t think a watch was right. And I thought maybe a necklace,” she says, and her eyes shift over his shoulder to meet Cat’s eyes, “but I know you like to change up your accessories. So I thought…” She gestures to the box.

Cat lifts the lid and her eyes brighten, lips lift up into a smirk. “Ah. How appropriate.”

“Yeah?”

“Very subtle.”

Kara beams. 

“I suppose I don’t need your number now that I have this,” she continues, lifting the hand mirror from its box. 

Kara grimaces. “I’d rather you call me if you’re not in danger, actually. This emits a high frequency tone that only Kal-el and I can hear. And the other Kryptonians, I guess. But they won’t know what it is. I told my cousin, he’ll keep an ear out.”

“ _Superman might come_?” Carter asks, so high-pitched Kara winces. 

“If I can’t, yeah. He will.”

“ _Oh my god,”_ Carter sighs, stars in his eyes. He flops backwards onto the couch, cupping his watch to his chest. “ _Superman._ Amazing. So cool.”

“So this is what jealousy feels like,” Kara says quietly, watching Carter with amused eyes. He lifts his head—a question on his lips. “You like my cousin more than you like me.” She pouts.

“He’s _Superman_ ,” Carter says, awed. “But you’re _Kara_.” His tone is no less awed, but far more warm and pleased and sweet. 

“He is kinda cool,” Kara admits. “He’s a _huge_ nerd though. You know he named all his super powers? Freeze breath,” she scoffs, shaking her head. When she looks up, Cat and Carter are looking at her with equally expectant faces. “What?”

“Now that you mentioned your powers,” Carter starts, and he reaches over and grips onto his mother’s arm. 

“Freeze breath?”

“But,” she frowns, confused, “you’ve seen it all before.”

“Not like this.”

“I—” They’re _both_ watching her expectantly and she smiles. “I’d love to show you. What do you want to see?”

Carter sits up ramrod straight, buzzing with energy. “The—there’s,” he can’t form the words he’s too excited and he punches his little fist into the couch cushions. Cat takes over smoothly. 

“There are plastic cups somewhere in the kitchen. You can fill one with water.”

Kara bites down on her lip and, after a moment of consideration, she pulls her glasses off very slowly. She folds the arms and blinks—she isn’t sure how much of that is muscle memory, pretending that her eye sight is terrible, and how much is her adjusting to that slight uptick in her powers. 

The sound of glasses being clicked down onto the kitchen counter is like a starting shot and, when they look up at her, she grins, drops Carter a wink, and zooms a little _too_ fast into the kitchen. She hears matched gasps behind her. When she comes back, they’re both sitting on the couch and Kara sips slowly from the cup. Cat’s eyes narrow—Carter laughs at her theatricality. 

She’ll never admit it to her sister but she’s tried ice trick from The Incredibles too many times to count and she’s a little afraid that nerves will get to her but she’s practiced enough that it should be easy and she spits the water up into the air and follows it with a quick blast of her freeze breath and Carter bounces up onto his knees on the couch, gripping at his moms shoulder. 

Kara catches the icicle and twirls it between her fingers before she holds it over the plastic cup and, very carefully, melts it with her lazer eyes. It drips then pours, sizzling, into the cup.

“ _This is so cool_ ,” Carter hisses and he stumbles up onto his feet and runs over to her. He rockets into the counter, bracing himself with his hands. Kara puts a hand out warningly. 

“Don’t touch. It’s hot.”

“ _Obviously_.”

“Smart ass.”

He bends over to look at the cup, eyes wide and amazed, and she feels a little thrill at her own powers. They _are_ cool, they _are_ fun, and sometimes she forgets that they can be. She turns to smile at Cat and falters—the woman is trembling, faintly, staring at Kara with a look Kara doesn’t recognise. A little dip between her eyebrows suggests a frown, suggests this is not _good_ and so, hurt panging deep in her chest, Kara takes one step and then another back away from Carter.

Kara finds out in that moment, quite unexpectedly, that she has always been frightened that Cat will be frightened of her—frightened that she might hurt Carter by accident, frightened of all the power that she holds because if anyone knows what kind of bad, dark, terrible things can be done by people with too much power, it’s Cat Grant. 

Kara crosses her arms tight over her chest to make her body small—her muscles tense and she feels her shoulders widen and realises exactly how aggressive a stance it really is. Her hands slip, around her stomach, then drop down to her sides. What to do? She reaches up to her glasses and then hooks her fingers together behind her back.

She picks up her glass to drink some water because anything, anything other than looking at Cat Grant’s disapproving face will do—she assumes it’s disapproving. Maybe even scared. She doesn’t dare look to find out for sure. 

She drinks successfully—it’s when she’s putting it down again that the glass cracks and then, when she grips it more firmly to hold it together, shatters.

Kara wants to cry. 

“I’m so sorry.”

“Carter,” Cat says quietly, “would you give us a minute?”

He had jumped when the glass broke but he’s still staring at the other cup, with the water she had frozen and unfrozen, and now that it has cooled he holds it in his hand and has brought it right up to his face. He shrugs. ’“Sure. Kara, are you staying for dinner?”

“We’ll see,” Cat says for her, when Kara stares wide eyed over at her. “Go on, Carter. I know you have some reading to do for class.”

“Okay.”

“I’m so sorry,” Kara whispers when Carter’s bedroom door closes behind him. “I didn’t mean to break anything.”

“Kara,”

“I’ll clean it up right now—no, Cat, no stay where you are. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Cat stops just beyond the furthest fragment and Kara carefully sweeps it all up. 

“Why do you do it so slowly?” Cat asks as she works. “Habit? Surely it would be easier to do it with your superspeed.” Kara shrugs. “Kara,” Cat says, voice sharp. Kara knows that she expects an answer. 

“I don’t want to scare you.”

“Scare me? I know you have powers already. I have _seen_ them before.”

It’s a challenge or something like it—best case, Cat can prove that she trusts Kara. Worst case, Cat panics.

“Alright.” Kara says slowly, and she stands, and then the kitchen is spotless. Not just the glass fragments—Carter’s lunch plate, Cat’s coffee cups, a mark Cat has never been able to get out of the table top—they’re all gone and everything is shiny and gleaming and Kara is closing the cupboard beneath the sink and turning on the tap to wash her hands. She dries them, also slowly, and turns to Cat, wadding the cloth up in her hands. She leans back against the counter and meets Cat’s eyes. 

“So?”

Cat swallows. Kara’s eyes slip down to her mouth, her head tilts a little and she frowns down at Cat’s chest. After a moment, her eyes clear and she flushes. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. 

“You’re not scared,” Kara says. 

“No.” Cat smirks. She makes her way over, slow and purposeful. It’s gratifying to see that Kara watches this time. To see that Kara’s hands drop down to her side and reach back to wrap around the edge of the marble counter. 

Cat doesn’t stop her advance until she’s a few inches from Kara. Nose to nose, almost. They would be if she were wearing her heels. Kara hunches a little—Cat doubts the woman knows what she’s doing.

“You know,” Cat says lightly, reaching up to twirl a strand of Kara’s hair around her finger. Kara watches the movement closely, so closely that she misses Cat lifting her other hand to press against the counter scant millimetres from Kara’s hand. “I’m very attracted to power.” 

A strangled noise slips from between Kara’s lips. 

Cat sways forward a little, enough that Kara can feel the heat of her body, and then away. Kara bites down on her lower lip. Cat forgets her plan for a moment—she watches that lip dimple and whiten under Kara’s teeth. It’s deceptive how soft she appears. _Intoxicating_. 

“ _Cat_ ,” Kara murmurs. “What are we doing?”

“Anything but being professional.”

She leans in slowly. Drags her fingers over Kara’s knuckles, first, then up her forearms and up to her shoulders. She wants to linger—to dig her fingers into the hint of muscles she can feel but Karais already breathing heavily and her eyes are wide and dark. She’s _trembling_ and it’s too much to resist. 

She goes slowly. Kara could pull away. Cat’s barely touching her—hands are resting so _lightly_ on Kara, skimming up her neck. Her fingers brush lightly across Kara’s jaw and she’s surprised and agonisingly turned on when Kara crumples at the feel of it, a groan ripped from her throat. Kara’s knees quake and she sinks down—Cat grabs her arms firmly and pushes her back against the counter roughly. 

Cat places a flat palm on the back of her neck, but it’s Kara who closes the distance between them.

Kara’s lips are soft. Her whole body is soft—it gives and gives under the press of Cat’s body, presses further back into the counter, flesh dimples under gripping fingers. She gives when Cat pulls on her hair, gives a groan and a sigh and her lips open when Cat demands it with an insistent tongue. She’s so _soft_ and smooth and warm and Cat has always loved that about women but this woman, this woman who should be hard edges and steel is so warm and soft Cat can’t _think._ She can hardly _breathe_ because this woman can also kiss—gently and carefully and with a slow building intensity like she wants to experience all of Cat, know all of Cat. Cat is inclined to let her. 

She tastes of sugar and Cat licks into her mouth and makes Kara open up to her, desperate for more of the taste of Kara coffee and sweet, sticky syrup and something darker, rougher, warmer, like black smoke, and the reminder of dimension is a reminder too that this isn’t just sweet Kara this is _Supergirl_ and when Cat’s fingers curl and tug in her hair and pull her head back, intent on kissing and biting and marking a path down that perfect throat, Kara gives her a low rumble of pleasure, and the marble cracks under her hands loudly. 

Cat withdraws her hands very slowly—one from Kara’s hair, now deliciously mussed, one from just under her shirt from her hip—and she smirks when Kara blinks her hazy eyes open and searches for her, confused. 

“What—” Kara licks her lips. Cat stares at the smudges of red she’s left on that golden skin. Kara clears her throat. “What’s wrong?”

“You broke the counter,” Cat tells her, very obviously smug. 

Kara peels her hands away and small shards and powdered marble cascades down to the floor. “Oh.” A flush crawls up her cheeks. “S—sorry. ”

“Don’t be.” Cat gestures for her to move away and she traces the impressions with one finger. “Hard to explain to Carter but,” her eyes flash over her shoulder and Kara’s knees tremble again, “ _I’m_ very pleased.”

“Then,” Kara shakes her head to clear out the very persistent haze of arousal. “Why did you stop?”

“You broke the counter. Also, Carter is three doors down and has a habit of listening at doorways,” Cat reminds her. Kara grins. 

“He’s still in his room. He’s playing with—” She winces and clamps her hands over her ears. “With the watch,” she grits out. “ _Carter_.”

“Sorry! I just wanted to see if it worked.”

“It does.”

“Cool!”

Kara can’t help but grin and she sticks her fingers in her ears and wriggles, works her jaw to pop the ringing noise out. The insistent tone has gone and it—and Carter’s presence—has taken all her arousal with it.

They stare at each other for a few moments. Cat doesn’t dare move closer—she’s sure, absolutely certain, that she will kiss Kara again if she does. Kara can see it too and she wavers between staying where she is and moving closer to help that along a little. 

It is good, then, that Kara’s phone buzzes. 

Kara glances at it, narrows her eyes a little. “It’s Alex,” she says, though Cat is closer to the phone than she is by the whole length of the kitchen. 

“You should get that. I’m sure it’s important.” Kara nods. “I assume you still want to talk?” Kara nods again. She can’t look away from Cat’s lips—the lipstick is smudged and she lifts a hand to her own mouth, drags her fingertips across them. They come away glossy and coloured and she looks down at them for a moment before her eyes return to Cat. She steadies herself against the counter and slides Kara’s phone over to her. “I’ll leave the window open tonight,” she says, and turns her back on Kara and walks away. 

Kara waits until she hears a door close behind Cat and then she lunges for her phone, skimming the message. She rubs harshly at her lips to take the colour off. As much as she likes it, and she  _does_ , she can't imagine what Alex would say when she saw it. 

When she sees the mark on her jaw, Kara's knees weaken again and she stares at it in the reflection of the oven for a moment before she scrubs it away with her thumb. 

* * *

“God, Kara, what are you made of? Bricks?” Alex grunts as she leans Kara back against the wall. She rolls the tension out of her shoulders and cracks her “Are you sure about this? Because if I have to walk you all the way to the door and then you freak out and I have to walk you all the way  _back_ to the elevator…” She puts a warning hand on her gun and Kara grins, rolls her eyes.

“I’m good, I’m fine, just give me a second.” Kara presses a hand to her tender ribs. “I told her I’d be back tonight. Well, it was implied.”

Alex sighs and holds out her hands. “C’mon then.”

Kara nods a few times, psyching herself up, and then rocks her body forward. She lifts one arm—“ah, wait wait, cramp _cramp_ ”—and wraps it around Alex’s shoulders and they start the long limp down the hall. 

“This is a bad idea.”

“Oh come on, you say that about _everything_.”

“Because if I say it, you make marginally less terrible ideas.”

“I think I’ve done alright,” Kara says with a proud little grin and she groans when Alex jabs her elbow into her rib. She can’t fully feel it but she knows that she’s feeling tender so the “Ouch!” feels justified. She leans heavier into Alex in retaliation and almost sends them both to the ground. 

“Good one, Supergirl.”

“Shut up.”

They limp a little further down the hall. When Kara’s head dips forward and her weight pitches with it, Alex makes them stop. She rubs her hand in wide circles over Kara’s back. 

“Did I make the right choice tonight?” Kara asks her after a few long moment. 

Alex considers her reply—as a soldier, she would say no. But as a person, and as Kara’s sister, Alex knows that she made the only choice she could live with. 

“A family is alive right now because of you,” she says, and she presses her hand a little more firmly into Kara’s back to make sure that she can feel it—the warmth of skin, the pressure—and know that Alex _means_ it, and that she isn’t flinching away from Kara, or abandoning her, or any of those quiet scary thoughts that go through Kara’s mind after a night like this one. 

Kara gives her a sidelong glance. She knows what Alex isn’t saying. “He escaped. He could have told us about Myriad.”

“We have time to figure it out.”

“We have a _day_.”

“We will figure it out,” Alex says again. “Stop thinking about it. You just rest. Talk to _Cat_ ,” she teases, now that she’s gotten over Kara’s admission that Cat knows she’s Supergirl. Kara gives her an embarrassed scowl. “Whoa, what’s that for?”

“Don’t tease me.”

“About what? You not being able to keep a secret? Or about your crush?” Kara flushes red. “What? Cat got your tongue?”

“First of all, that’s a _terrible_ joke,” Kara scolds her, nose crinkling, “and second of all,” her eyes start to water, “I just don’t want to be teased right now.”

“Oh no.” Alex manoeuvres Kara so her back is against the wall again and it’s been tough going making their way down the hall and Cat’s door is, like, _right_ there but apparently they aren’t going to make it just yet. She cups Kara’s face and tilts it up to look at her. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

Kara sniffs and lowers her eyes, shrugs. 

“Kara.”

“My ribs hurt and my suit is torn up and he punched me into the ground and I’m all dirty,” she plucks at a leaf in her hair and sullenly shows off the dirt under her nails too, “and I lost Non’s stupid henchman because they think it’s okay to throw a car into a ravine and I have to talk to Cat about stuff and I want to help you but I’m so _tired_.” She can hear how close she is to whining and hates it but Alex thinks it’s cute, thinks it’s incredible to see through the smudges and the suit and all the toughness that she has to cloak around herself when she’s Supergirl it’s good to see that Kara, her little sister, is always there. 

Kara breathes out shakily and leans her forehead against Alex’s shoulder. 

“I know you see it like you’re being sidelined,” Alex says. She leans her cheek against Kara’s head—pulls a leaf away first. “But this isn’t that. We aren’t punishing you. We just want you to rest. You do _so much_ , Kara. I won’t have you do too much and get burned out halfway through a fight.” She says it calmly, the same way she directs Kara when they are sparring, but desperation floods through her and she hugs Kara a little more tightly. Kara is tender—she hopes that she feels the hug that little bit more, that little painful edge the same as Alex can feel. “It’s not too late to change your mind, you can always come back to my place. We can get take out. Watch something.”

Alex doesn’t try to mask the hope in her voice.

“You need to get back to work,” Kara points out. Alex knows she’s right. “I’ll bring you lunch tomorrow and you can catch me up with what you find out about Myriad.”

“Right.”

“But what about Tuesday? You said you wanted to catch up on Homeland.”

“Right, Tuesday.” Alex nods. “I’ll ask Hank if I can get the night off.” 

Kara giggles. “If we win, I’m sure he’ll be happy to let us relax.” They share an identical grin and ignore the big _if_ that hangs between them. “Maybe we should invite him along. How long do you think it’s been since he actually had fun? And beating me up in training doesn’t count.

“Oh I assure you, it does. That never gets old.”

“Alex!” Kara _laughs_ —and then groans and presses against her ribs and sighs. The hallway light flickers on—Cat’s door opens quickly and Alex’s hand darts to the gun on her hip, drawing it and half-raising it in one swift move. 

“Oh simmer down, Scully. It’s just me.”

“Miss Grant.”

“Congratulations, you have eyes. Supergirl,” Cat says sharply, turning to Kara who tries valiantly to push Alex away and stand on her own two feet. “This isn’t the window.”

“I got in a scuffle.”

“Well. Since you’re here. ” She opens the door a little wider. “I suppose you should both come in.”

Kara waves Alex’s hands away until she stumbles three steps in and Cat wavers in place—then she allows herself to lean on her sister and they hobble in.

“Scully, you can escort her to the guest room. Supergirl knows which door it is. There is a towel on the end of the bed and I’m sure her clothes from the other day have finished in the dryer.”

Alex murmurs a quiet thank you and tugs Kara down yet another hall. This one feels longer than the last, with Kara yawning with every step, and mumbling about bed. She gazes longingly at her guest bed as Alex wrestles her into the shower—the cold water brings her back to herself and she glares at her sister, yanking herself out from under stream of water. 

“Can you do this bit by yourself?”

“Yes.” Kara folds her arms over her chest and glowers at her sister. “Thanks for wetting my suit, really considerate of you.”

“You’re welcome.” She motions for her to turn and helps her with the zipper, yanking it down. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m _fine_.”

“You look creaky.”

“Creaky?”

“You move like mom does when she falls asleep in the armchair. And she’s _old_.”

“I’m telling her you said that.”

“Don’t you dare.”

Kara pokes her tongue out and grins. She still looks tired—around the eyes and the downward slope of her lips—but Alex is relieved to see some more energy in her movements. It would have been nice for her to get that back when they were walking down the hallway but better late than never, Alex reminds herself. 

“Turn around?” Kara obliges. There are no bruises to speak off and Alex pokes and prods at the skin of Kara’s ribs and her shoulders and grudgingly nods. “Alright. But if you don’t feel better tomorrow, I want you to come back and rest in the sun bed.”

“Okay.” Alex lingers and Kara rolls her eyes. “Can you, like, _leave?_ I’m trying to shower.”

“Don’t drown.”

“Why do you always have to have the last word?”

“Because I’m the cool one, and the pretty one,” she tells her, and yanks the bathroom door closed behind her quickly so she can’t hear Kara’s reply. She thinks about waiting around, just to make sure that Kara doesn’t drown, but Kara would be able to hear her so she decides not to. Instead, she makes her way back out to the front hall and, when she can’t see Cat, into the dining room. She’s sitting primly there at the table and when she hears Alex’s footsteps, she looks up. 

“Scully.”

Alex stops a few feet away and falls into a familiar pose, hands on hips. Well. One hand on her gun. 

“Let me guess. This is the point where you threaten me if I say anything about Supergirl’s identity and then you make some kind of cat pun.”

“No, this is where I threaten you if you hurt Kara at all. I promise if you do,” she smiles, all teeth, “I’ll end all nine of your lives.”

Cat arches her eyebrows. “Well. That one wasn’t terrible. Drink?”

Alex wavers. “Thanks, but no. I have to get back to work.”

“Another time, then.”

Alex nods. She stares at the woman—she understands why Kara likes her, she really does. Or, she gets why someone might. Kara has always been different so she doubts that her reasons are solely Cat’s beauty, or her apparent unflappable poise when faced with a stranger with a gun and an alien, or her good taste in alcohol. She doesn’t seem to mind that Alex is taller, clearly stronger, armed, that Alex is standing while she is sitting, and that kind of composure comes only from experience and confidence and a healthy daily dose of power—that, or it’s faked. Either way, it’s impressive.

“You got a phone?” Alex asks, and Cat blinks—the only sign that she’s surprised. 

"No. I'm the CEO of a massive international media company and I don't have a phone."

Alex rolls her eye and waits until Cat gets over herself enough to point to the couch, where a phone has been discarded on the cushions there. Alex scoops it up and programmes her number under _Agent Scully_. “It’s for emergencies only. Clear?”

“Crystal.” Cat sips her drink. “Tell me, Agent Scully, how is our hero?”

Alex glances over her shoulder. She can still hear the shower running. “She had a run in with an enemy tonight. He threw a car down a ravine.” She sees the way Cat’s body jerks. Alex understands—sometimes, she’s still surprised by what they can do, what Kara can do. She saw her sister catch the SUV in her arms like it was a toy. An ungainly toy, yes, but no trouble at all. “She caught it.”

“Were there people inside?”

“A family,” Alex nods.

“Are they alright?”

Alex strains her ears for any sign that Kara is listening. “The mom hit her head. Died on impact,” she tells Cat very quietly. “The dad is okay. And the little girls as well.”

Cat sighs. “What can I do?”

It isn’t what Alex expected. After two years of Kara ranting about Cat Grant, this isn’t the woman that Alex expected. But, she supposed, Kara hadn’t known Cat. Just Cat Grant. This woman allows herself to be soft in her own home and Alex can respect the separation of work and home. 

“She’s okay. Or she will be. She just needs to rest.” Cat nods. “Oh, and make sure she sits in the sun tomorrow and doesn’t spend all day in bed.”

“Are there any foods in particular she should eat?”

“No, just lots of it. Sometimes when she’s hungry she eats so fast I doubt she tastes any of it.” Alex grins and Cat returns it with a small, small smirk that is an agreement and also a thank you—for opening up, for trusting her with information that any mere agent wouldn’t know about Supergirl. For trusting in Kara’s trust, and showing Cat that yes, they are sisters. “If she goes quiet and sad, try and pull her back,” Alex continues gruffly, ducking her head. She stares down at the phone in her hands and pretends that she’s adding more details to the contact she made for herself. “Kara is the best person I know and it’s hard for her to lose someone. Be nice.”

“Sometimes, nice isn’t what she needs. She’s made of sterner stuff than even you realise.” Cat’s tone is sharp and Alex frowns. “I’m not sure you always know what is best for her.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Alex steps in closer. Cat doesn’t flinch, just turns her head and lifts her chin. 

“It means I’m surprised you’re here at all. I heard you two had a…falling out.” Cat narrows her eyes. “Kara was very upset.” She looks _smug_ when Alex flinches. Alex clenches her free hand into a fist. 

Her teeth grit. “I know. It was unavoidable,” she says, giving nothing more away. The very faint shadow of disappointment that flickers over Cat’s face sends a sharp spike of satisfaction through Alex—she’d been scrounging for details, obviously. Alex holds out the phone, smacks it into Cat’s waiting palm. “Let me know if you have any trouble.”

“ _If_ we have any trouble, you’ll hear from me.” They both hear when the shower stops. Cat stands smoothly and downs the last of her drink. She steps into the hall. “You know your way out, Agent Scully.”


	12. Chapter 12

Kara is leaning against the wall outside her guest bedroom. She is barefoot, dressed in her sweatpants and her favourite plain t-shirt. There is a towel wrapped around her neck to catch the drops from her wet hair and she grips the end of the the towel in nervous hands. 

She looks soft. Small.

Cat is thankful, just a little, that Kara won’t meet her eyes. She keeps trying to imagine the super crest over Kara’s chest, trying to super impose a hero over that folded frame. 

She considers making them both a drink but the way Kara wavers in place makes her think that the woman wouldn’t be able to hold it, much less muster the effort it will take to drink. 

So. Just to talk then. 

“Kara,” she calls. Then again when Kara doesn’t react. “Kara,” she says, and holds her bedroom door open. “Come along.”

She leads them into her bedroom and smiles when she hears the faint gasp behind her. Cat wonders what it is that has caught Kara’s attention—when she turns, Kara is dragging a curious hand over the beautiful, warm wood of her desk. The woman walks further into the room, trails her fingers over the end of the bedcover. But her eyes are fixed on the window and on some point far, far away. 

_“_ I confess,” Cat says, coming up behind her. “Carter might be the reason I bought the place but this is the reason I haven’t look anywhere else.”

“Do you ever get tired of having a penthouse apartment in the loveliest part of town?” Kara teases with the tiniest smile. 

“No.”

Kara walks to the window. One splayed hand lifts presses against the cool glass there—her other hand cling the ends of her towel still, even as she rests her forehead on the window frame. 

The penthouse isn’t on the edge of the city, not quite, but it is one of the last tall apartment buildings in the area. It has an unobstructed view out to the wide, wide desert—all dark now, of course, but perhaps not to Kara. Cat wonders if she can see the colours Cat has seen, oranges and deep blues and purples and red settling over the land and sweeping up to the mountains. Or maybe she just sees a hundreds of blacks slipping and sliding shadows and shapes in the dark night and finds that as magical as the colours of the sun. Or maybe, Cat considers, she is staring at the stars. 

“Carter knows about this?” she asks, twisting a little to find Cat standing a short way away. She steps up closer, by her side. 

“We have sleepovers sometimes.” She smiles her fond Carter smile. “He’s very good at making stable pillow forts.”

“I’ll bet.” Kara returns her gaze to the view and stares.

Cat checks her phone—messages have been flooding in about Supergirl’s brave rescue and about a second, unnamed person who was there—a man dressed all in black who had taunted SUpergirl in their own shared language and threw a car over the edge of a ravine. Photos, too—some useable, some not—of Supergirl lowering the car to the ground, of her sweeping a woman into her arms and showing off into the sky, of agents in black swarming the area.

When she looks up again, Kara’s eyes are closed. Hand loosely curled, shoulders slumped, Kara looks tired. More—she looks exhausted.

Cat whispers her fingers ever so lightly against Kara’s arm and then presses lightly. “Bed, Kara,” she tells her.

“No,” Kara sighs. “No, we have to talk.”

Cat purses her lips, feelings for Kara warring with logic. She nods. “Alright.”

Kara turns away from the view, leans back against the wall. She lifts her towel and rubs at the ends of her hair. “They figured out what Myriad is. Sort of.”

“Oh?”

“That USB Lord gave me? He had sifted this, I don’t know, data I guess that he hadn’t coded. We decrypted it—well, Winn did. And Max, and some other agents from the DEO—”

“DEO?” Kara frowns. “No, you’re right. It can wait. Please, continue.”

“He thinks, _they_ think,” Kara corrects herself, and there is a flash of something darker and angrier that Cat recognises as how Kara feels about Lord. “They think that it’s some kind of wave length…I don’t know the word. Amplifier.”

“To what purpose?”

“Hypothetically? Mind control.”

“Mind…control,” Cat repeats, slowly. She taps her fingers against the case of her phone thoughtfully. “Really?”

“I don’t know the details. I can ask Alex for you?”

“No, I believe you. It sounds far-fetched but then again,” she lifts her eyebrows, “you _are_ an alien. Besides,” she wriggles her phone in Kara’s direction, _Agent Scully_ brightly displayed. “I have my own contact. I can ask your _Alex_ myself.”

Kara blinks, then reaches out for the phone. “Alex gave you her number?”

“She did.”

“Why? She _hates_ —“ Kara stops. “Uh. Hates reporters? She’s an agent, she has to be secretive so,”

“Relax, Kiera, I’m sure you’ve had years worth of quibbles to relate to your sister. It’s not like we’re going to be friends.” Cat turns and stalks away, clicks her phone down onto her bedside table. 

“So why _did_ she give it to you then?”

Cat looks back over her shoulder and just raises her eyebrows. “I imagine because she cares very much for you.”

“But,”

“The number is for me to call if you need help.”

“Oh.” Kara’s eyes soften and she twists the towels in her hands. “Well, I,” she takes a step forward, eyes flashing with purpose. “Speaking of help. I think you should leave. You and Carter, get out of the city before it all goes down and—”

“No.”

“Cat,”

“I’m staying.”

“Cat, _think_ about it. He will only have control over National City—Max’s satellites only have so much reach. If you leave, you can go and give everyone else a head start on figuring out how to beat him.”

“A nice touch, trying to appeal to my heroics. But you forget that I have Madame President on speed dial. Telling people what is going on is somewhat of a strength of mine, wouldn’t you agree?”

“This isn’t about who you have on speed dial or who you take Sunday brunch with, Cat.” Cat bristles, a retort barbed behind her lips. Her job is _more_ than brunches and events. “This is about actual real danger that you are in—he _threatened_ your _life_ ,” Kara says, voice on the edge of a growl. 

Cat blinks. She hadn’t known that. “Who did?”

“ _Non_.” This time, her voice is a growl. 

“I assume he’s the leader of these…extremists?”

“Yes.”

Cat watches her a moment longer, journalistic senses tingling. “Who is he to you? Why is he attacking _you_?”

Kara frowns. “It’s not enough that I’m Supergirl?”

Cat laughs. “Please. Two Kryptonians in the same city, one hell bent on some kind of vendetta and one tragically torn between anger and some warped kind of hurt and you want me to think that you don’t have any kind of connection? Kiera, please.” Cat notices the way Kara looks away when she says _hurt_ and how she crosses her arms Supergirl strong across her chest. The two motions don’t add up—one secretive, anxious…ashamed? And the other proud and strong. No. There’s something going on. She presses a little further. “Well, I certainly won’t be leaving my city and the people who depend on me just because someone threatened me. If I ran away every time I was threatened, I’d never get any work done.” She sits on the end of the bed, smoothes her hands down her skirt. “Carter, on the other hand…”

“Yes. Yes, send Carter away, please.”

“Tell me who he is,” Cat counters. 

Kara shakes her head slowly, lets her arms fall from their defensive guard. “He’s my uncle,” she admits, and she won’t meet Cat’s eyes. 

“Your uncle,” Cat breathes. So it’s not just that he’s her race. It’s not just the fact that it’s another planet on the brink of destruction. It’s her _uncle_. And knowing Kara, that and all the rest is tearing her up inside.

“He was married to my aunt. Astra.” Kara’s lips turn up the tiniest bit. “The woman floating in CatCo plaza.”

“The one you punched three feet into the concrete?”

“Yes,” Kara grins, a little more genuinely when she hears Cat’s reluctant awe regarding her powers. “That was Astra.”

“You’ve said that twice. Was.”

Kara’s smile fades and then drops entirely. “She died.” Cat just _looks_ at her and Kara closes her eyes. “Was killed.”

“I’m sorry,” Cat relents. “I’m sorry. This isn’t,” she sighs, bows her head for a moment. When she looks up, she holds her hand out, palm up, and waits until Kara comes to join her sitting on the bed. “This isn’t an interrogation,” she promises, and holds Kara’s hand in hers. “I appreciate you telling me this. I’ll make sure that Carter is well on his way to his fathers tomorrow morning.”

Kara blows out a breath of relief. “Good. Thank Rao. I…I don’t suppose I could convince you to take him personally?” she tries.

Cat smiles. “No. I would say nice try but that was barely mediocre at best.”

Kara shrugs. 

They sit still for a moment. Cat looks down at their joined hands—it’s not something she usually does, and she wonders if it’s a bit too tender, a bit too much, but this is Kara whom she has known for years, Kara whose smile has always been welcoming, who has always helped her, her guardian angel, her good, _good_ hearted shadow, and Cat has _held_ her so this, this shouldn’t be too much. Kara doesn’t seem to mind. She seems to enjoy the contact, leaning and turning a little closer to Cat so their shoulders brush and not really seeming to notice that she’s doing it. Cat wonders if she’ll notice something else—she begins to trace Kara’s hands, guided by her wonder at the fact that these delicate fingers tore into the metal of a plane and stop bullets in their barrels. 

Kara shifts in place and Cat smiles. Oh yes. She strokes each of Kara’s fingers. Yes, Kara notices this. 

“Why did he threaten me?” Cat asks softly. She keeps her voice low and soft and gentle. “And Carter?”

Kara’s knee nudges against Cat’s, settles with a warm heavy weight against her. “Astra. She knew who I was, I think she must have watched me for a while. I don’t know…” she sighs. “I don’t know whether that was her spying on me for intel or, or just Astra being concerned. Maybe she missed me. Maybe both. But Non knows that I’m Kara Danvers, that I work for you, that Alex is my sister. He knows who I am, who I care about.” Kara’s hand folds into a fist and Cat’s fingers find more to work with, to wonder over—the strength in these hands is more obvious now that it’s given purpose. Cat drags her finger over the rise and fall of the knuckles—the bone is sharp, skin whitening where it pulls tight over them, and she thinks of bones and grave yards and exposed ruins and the white ash of a burned planet and they are images of a world she’s put behind her of war and fire and so many screams and there are years and miles between them but they still _frighten_ her and Cat wraps her hand around Kara’s wrist. To keep her, still or here Cat isn’t sure. “He promised to come after everyone I care about.”

“But he didn’t mention me personally?”

“No.”

Cat strokes her thumb over the knob in Kara’s wrist. “Then why? Why send me and Carter away? How could he know I exist?”

“I doubt there is a person alive who doesn’t know you exist, Cat.” Kara turns a little more toward her, dips her head low to try and catch Cat’s eyes. “Please,” she says quietly, “just because he didn’t mention you by name, it doesn’t mean he isn’t going kill you. Hurt you. Please Cat, I care, I don’t want to be the reason that you get hurt.”

“Why are you so insistent about this?” Cat asks, eyes narrowed. Her curious fingers stop. “Is this because of the kiss? Because Kara, we kissed, _yes_ , but that does not mean that I am interested in being told what to do and how to parent _my_ son so—”

“This isn’t about the kiss,” Kara snaps, and she pulls her hand away, quickly but ever so gently. She walks to the door in quick strides. Cat shoots to her feet. 

“Oh no, don’t you dare! You came back here to talk to me so talk. Explain yourself. Explain why it is that we are in so much more danger than anyone else.”

“Because I _care_ ,” Kara says, wheeling around to face her. “I care about you!”

“So it _is_ about the kiss!” Cat says. She props her hands on her hips. “Honestly, you millennials, getting so hung up on a k—“

“It’s not about the kiss! It’s about the fact that Non could literally _rip_ you to pieces with his bare hands if he wanted to!” Kara’s own hands come up then—she shakes her open hands in Cat’s direction. _Look,_ she’s saying, _these hands, this power, this is what he has_ , and Cat knows in theory that she’s right, that this Non has the same power and strength as she does, but in actually no one has Kara’s hands—artists hands, hands that hold and work and carry and build, hands that hold buildings up and curl metal and hands, a pair of the only hands she trusts to touch and care for her son—and isn’t that the difference between them? All written right there, plain as anything, into the gentle purpose of her careful, caring hands. 

“He could kill you in a hundred, a thousand different ways and he might do that to anyone who has ever even _spoken_ to me! Anyone I have saved. Anyone on the street, he could snatch them up and kill them faster than you can even blink and I might not be able to _stop him._ So _forgive_ me,” Kara says, voice cracking with the urgency, the care, the fear behind it, “for caring about you. _Forgive_ me for, yes, thinking that the kiss meant something. Ignore it for all I care but do _not_ ,” she snarls, taking a step forward, “do _not_ ignore the fact that you are in actual _danger_.”

Cat lifts her chin a touch, taking in this Kara. There’s nothing new in this Kara, nothing that Cat hasn’t seen before—caring, fear, anger, grief, and this impeccable restraint born of years of practice and years of fear and years of love that means she is solid and _angry_ , yes, but Cat is not afraid—but she is utterly magnified and utterly magnificent and Cat doesn’t know if that is new or if she’s finally able to see it. 

“Just, please Cat,” she says, sagging into the silence that is all Cat gives her. “I just want you to be safe.”

After a time, Cat says quietly, “You can’t save everyone, Supergirl.”

“ _Obviously_.” Kara mutters the words. She turns her head away and sighs, leans back against the wall and rubs at her shoulder. 

Cat thinks over her words and, though she doesn’t regret what she says—because it’s true—she does regret saying it now. Images of that dead woman surely flooding Kara's mind and that's not what Cat wanted, that's the furthest from what she wanted. “That’s not what I meant, Kara. It’s not the same,” she tells her quietly and Kara nods. “Does it hurt?”

Kara blinks. Looks down at her hand. “No. Not really.”

“Not really?”

“It’s just an ache. Exertion.” She digs her fingers into the muscle there and sighs, rolls her shoulder out. “There’s nothing I can say to convince you to leave?”

“Nothing. I may not be a superhero but I have a place here. I have a job to do and it is important.” Kara nods, resigned. 

“I just…there’s no way this ends well, Cat. He’s powerful, he has an army, he has,” she jerks her chin toward the window, “ _Myriad_. And I have just me.”

“You are never just you, Kara. And there is a third way this could turn out. Where you win and save us all.”

Kara’s lips turn up a little and she shoots Cat a sweet smile. “Cat Grant, an optimist?”

“Supergirl has changed more than just the conversation of media,” Cat tells her firmly. “She— _you_ —have changed people. You’ve changed,” Cat presses her lips together, licks them quickly, before she admits softly, “You’ve changed me. And so yes, I do believe that so long as we have faith and people who are willing to stand up and fight, people who look to their better angels and have _hope_ , who keep trying when they fail, then they can do anything. And you?” Cat fixes her eyes on Kara. “You have always been able to do anything you set your mind to, Kara. Always.”

Kara’s smile falters for a moment—from shock, Cat thinks—and then it returns ten fold and _blinding_. “Thank you, Cat. That means a lot.”

“Of course.” 

//

Cat busies herself for a little while, giving Kara some space. She changes into her nightclothes—a shirt and leggings, to match Kara a little, well aware of how clothes can be used as armour or weapon and wanting very much to be on an equal footing with the other woman for the time being. 

When she comes out of her en suite, Kara has sat herself on her desk and in her hands is the little hand mirror she gave Cat. She turns it over and over between her fingers. 

“Kara?”

“That woman,” she says very softly. “She had a husband and kids. A whole life. Gone. Just like that.”

Cat nods.

“I didn’t know her at all.” Kara flips the hand mirror one last time before she places it down with a quiet _click._ “It hurts to lose her. Knowing that if I had been a little faster, a little more gentle maybe I could have saved her.”

“That’s not knowing, Kara. That’s torturing yourself.”

Kara shrugs. “My point is that I know your job is important and I’m glad to have you by my side when, when this happens. I still had to try though. To know that I at least _tried_ to keep you safe.” Cat crosses the distance between them and, after a moment of thought, places her hands on Kara’s knees. Kara stares down at the contact and, after drawing in a struggling breath, she continues. “I’m so afraid, Cat. There’s, there’s so much for me to lose.” She moves her hand so fast it blurs and Cat’s fingers tighten on Kara’s knees. She relaxes when Kara curls a hand around Cat’s wrist. “I haven’t—I haven’t done all that I want to do. I haven’t,” she looks up with wide, _sad_ eyes. “I haven’t been to Egypt. I’ve always wanted to go. I can fly but I’ve never been.” Kara snorts, lifts watering eyes up to the ceiling. “And I want to see Uluru and taste star fruit and Rao, I want to see a whale in the wild. I want to spend seven lifetimes in the Louvre.”

“Kara,” Cat presses down a little more firmly to draw Kara’s attention. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s not fair,” she tells Cat quietly. Kara’s eyes squeeze shut and Cat lifts her hands up to her cheeks when the tears start. Just a few, and Kara holds her whole body still in an effort to stop them. Cat wipes them away with her thumbs.

“What isn’t?” she asks her softly. 

“He wants to kill me,” Kara says, and her voice cracks. “I’m finally _happy_ and he wants to kill me and I haven’t done anything, Cat, I’ve held myself back my whole life and I’m _finally_ starting to actually live and now I’m going to die.”

The word strikes out between them and settles, like smog, dark and heavy. It tastes sour in Cat’s mouth—real, like Kara believes it. Fully. Inescapable. 

She thinks of mind control and alien powers and a girl with soft skin and a bright smile and she thinks of every single story she’s ever heard where that girl is the first to die. There is no room for innocents in this world, no space for girls who are in love with the sun and their friends and who believe in second chances and who believe that people, despite the sum of their actions, are inherently good.

But. 

Kara is a girl who got a man to hand over his gun—no powers, just a trembling hand and her own unshakeable faith. 

An unshakeable faith shaken right down to its ruins, and Cat frowns. She peels herself away and begins to pace, short lines across the width of her room, central to the desk. Kara watches her quietly and just lets her pace, and think, and pace. 

Finally, she comes to a brisk stop in front of Kara and props her hands on her hips. 

“Be selfish.”

Kara blinks, then squints over at Cat. “What?”

Cat clicks her tongue. She understands that the girl is as pure as fallen snow, _impossibly_ good, but surely she understands what it means to be selfish.

Her confusion indicates that she doesn’t, not really, or at least not what Cat means by it so Cat purses her lips and, though her eyelashes flutter with annoyance, she continues.“You go out there,” waves a hand to the window, “every day to fight increasingly competent villains for people who, honestly, most of the time don’t deserve it.” She holds up a hand to stop the expected slew of denial. “Yes, I know. The people of the city all deserve it, you care for all of them, _please._ Save it for the papers. _My_ point is, and you will listen,” she says, sharpening her voice because she can see Kara’s eyes shifting to the window and beyond and she guesses that, if she let her, Kara would fade away from their conversation, ears searching for any sign of danger. Pleas for help. “ _My_ point is that if you truly think you’re going to die, you should have something you want to come back to.”

“Like a bucket list?” Kara laughs.

Cat rolls her eyes so hard she thinks she might have strained a muscle. “Like a memory. Or a promise.”

“I have my family,” Kara shrugs. “I have Alex. I’ll always try to come home to her.”

“That’s…good,” Cat admits. She assumes heroes always have those important people. “But I was thinking something rather less pure and more hedonistic. If anyone has the right to be a hedonist, it’s you.”

“What?”

“Enjoy yourself. Enjoy _everything_.” Cat smirks. “You’re more likely to save the world if you actually _like_ the world, don’t you think?”

Kara shrugs again, still too withdrawn for Cat’s liking. “The world and everything in it _is_ my pleasure,” she tells her. “That’s all I want. For everyone to be safe from him.” She says it, so convinced that it’s all about to be taken from her, and Cat swallows the cold curl of fear when she realises again just how possible it is. 

She dismisses it with a scoff and a toss of her hair. “You must be the most impossible person in the world.”

“Thank you?” Kara guesses, even though Cat’s tone is not complimentary. 

“No. It’s a problem. You had this problem when you started and it’s still a problem now, though I thought I had taught you better.” Kara frowns. “You think too big.”

“Says you, massive multi-million dollar international media mogul.”

“Flattery won’t get you out of this discussion, Kiera,” Cat says, though a pleased smile curves her lips. She doubts she’ll ever get tired of hearing her accomplishments listed like that. “Besides, you’re proving my point. I have told you _before_ ,” she narrows her eyes, “I had to start somewhere. Start small. Worked hard and fostered networks and connections and worked harder still and I made myself what I am today.”

“I—don’t understand,” Kara admits. “I practised. I’ve done better—I’m _Supergirl_. Are you saying I’m doing something wrong?”

“No, Kara. I’m saying that instead of focusing on everyone else, instead of focusing on the world, think instead of your place in it. That’s all you can really control. _You_. So be selfish. Put yourself first. Carve out a place for yourself that, when all this is over, when your job is done, you can come back to it and be _you._ Think about what you really want and just,” Cat pauses long enough for Kara to look at her—really _look_ at her when she smiles, eyes glittering with something like promise, something like intent, and she bares perfect white teeth and says, “ _take it_.”

She can see the exact moment Kara understands what she’s saying—at least a part of what she’s saying, because it undoubtedly has a sexual edge to it but that’s not _wholly_ what Cat means. 

Kara’s eyes darken in mere moments, pupils rushing to take over, and she licks her lips and leans forward, locking her hands around the edge of Cat’s desk. Which, if history is to repeat itself, just won’t do. Cat is very fond of her desk. 

“Miss Grant,” Kara scolds, eyes wide. There’s the faintest hint of a smile, though, in the way she can’t keep the corners of her lips from turning up, can’t stop the skin around her eyes from crinkling, can’t stop her laugh lines from deepening just a touch. “Are you taking advantage of me in my weakened state?”

“Yes, I am. And I expect you to take advantage right back.” They pause for a moment—they can’t help it, the _reason_ for all of this still fresh still present causing doubt and hesitation and demanding to be felt. Kara… _Kara_ feels it so keenly that cold ice shudders out from between her lips and she looks back down at her hands, where they curl around smooth wood. She peels them away and wipes her hands down her thighs. It’s too much—this is her first chance, most likely her last, to have _something_ with someone. More, with _Cat_. And she wants it, she wants it so much, wants _Cat_ so much, but she wants even more to be wholly present in the moment as Cat deserves—as _she_ deserves—and not to be listening for that inevitable attack, not to be driven by fear but by the impossibly sweet sensation of simply wanting to be close to someone in all ways. 

“Cat. I—I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Cat watches her closely for a moment before she steps in, hands dropping from her hips. She hesitates before asking, “Do you trust me, Kara?”

“You know I do, Cat.”

“In other things, yes. But this?” Cat narrows her eyes. “I need you to tell me.”

Kara frowns before nodding slowly. “I do. Trust you.”

“Then trust me when I say I have no demands of you. This?” She waves between their bodies. “This is all you. What do you want?” Kara’s face twists with uncertainty. “There is no wrong answer. Just tell me the truth.”

“I—I want to have sex with you,” she says in a rush, and her hand whips up to cover her mouth. A red blush heats her neck—she hadn’t meant to say it _quite_ so indelicately as that, evidently. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that, I’m just so tired and—”

“You don’t want to have sex with me?”

“No! I do! I _do_ want that,” she says, but it isn’t sexy at all when Kara sounds miserable. “But I just, I really want to…I don’t know. I want to kiss you, mostly.” Kara’s eyes dart away and then back to her. “And…like we did that first night,” she says more quietly, eyes slipping away again. 

“You want to be held,” Cat says for her, because apparently Kara is still incapable of asking for anything for herself. It’s worth it, and forgivable, when Kara blushes and smiles, shoulders drooping free of tension when she nods, relieved. 

“Yeah. I know it’s probably not what you want, I,”

Cat sighs a sharp sigh to stop her from talking—it works too, and Kara grins and gives her a small reproving look because that sigh was all Cat Grant, CEO. “When the world renowned mentalist Patrick Jane attempted to read my mind,” she tells Kara briskly, ignoring her look, “he told me that I have mind like a fortress. No one knows my mind but me, Kara, so I will forgive you that incorrect guess and I will tell you _again_ ,” she says with a little and ineffective glare that means ‘ _I don’t like repeating myself_ ’, “that all I want is what you want. No more than that.”

A fond, very fond smile, softens Kara’s face. She reaches up and falters a moment when her fingers don’t encounter her glasses. Instead, she flattens her hand against her cheek—hot, with a faint blush still—and skips her fingers back, tucking her hair behind her ear. Still a little wet, a few strands stay clinging to her cheek and her neck.

Cat swallows and reaches over, slowly, to guide the last of the tendrils back. An extra stroke of her fingers, then, because Kara’s skin is very soft and she doesn’t have half the control she should have around Kara. She follows with her eyes the line that her fingers draw, down behind Kara’s ear, a swirl at the edge of her jaw, continues a little ways down her neck under the disguise of shifting the hair that clings there too—it prompts a sigh, her fingers stroking Kara’s neck, and Kara’s eyes flutter and her head tilts to the side to give Cat more room, a gesture that has Cat swallowing again—and she draws her fingers back up to her original path, stroking ever so lightly back up to Kara’s jaw and down underneath her chin. She considers Kara’s dark, hooded eyes and those lips parted slightly and, on a whim, Cat twists her hand to cup Kara’s chin and drags her thumb across her lower lip.

She pulls her hand away slowly and is pleased when Kara follows, leaning forward. Then Cat’s lips are at Kara’s ear and she hears the way Kara sucks in a deep breath and feels her thigh tense under her other hand. 

“ _What do you want, Kara_?” she murmurs, and pulls back so she can see Kara’s face when she answers. 

“I just want to be close to you,” Kara whispers, and the words—admitted so hesitantly, so softly, as she looks up from under demure lashes—send an electric thrill right through her. She stares at Cat and her blue eyes _burn_ with all kinds of intent before the heat simmers and slows and banks to a low, low heat. “Can we just,” she flicks her eyes to the bed behind Cat. “Feel? I just,” The words stop in her throat and she sighs, shakes her head quickly. Pushing Cat away, a little, Kara slides off the top of the desk and hooks her thumbs in the waist of her pants. Before Cat can connect the dots, Kara is pulling her sweatpants down those long, perfect legs—she hops in place, yanking them from each foot and Cat laughs. Kara peeks up, swaying on one foot, holding the other in her hands and Cat’s laugh stops when Kara suddenly begins to float. 

“Oh.” Cat looks from the decent six, eight inches between Kara’s feet and the floor and then up at the girl floating above her. “Oh. It’s _so_ ,” she blinks and reaches out for Kara and feels her adjust, lower herself back down to the floor and fit her body expertly against Cat’s. “It’s so different when you’re you,” she tells Kara. 

“Instead of Supergirl?”

Cat nods.

Kara shrugs. “I’m still me,” she says, but she doesn’t sound wholly convinced of it. 

“Yes.” She runs her eyes over the girl, appraisingly. “Yes you are.”

She looks vulnerable and a little uncomfortable under Cat’s curious examination and Cat knows it’s up to her to once again even the playing field. She steps back and around the bed to her side. Pulling down the covers, she pauses a moment before slipping in to pull off her leggings. A quick look to where she left Kara confirms who hurries—a little too fast to be human—to the other side of the bed and she slips in, purposefully not looking at Cat’s body. 

“You wanted to feel, didn’t you Kara?” Cat asks and Kara’s face _bursts_ into red at the light seduction. Cat laughs. “I think you’re allowed to look as well.”

Kara glances up at her face and nods. And then she looks. She looks like an artist, first, Cat thinks. A little impersonal, a little wondering yes but more colours and textures and shape. It takes a while before Kara’s lower lip finds a home between her teeth and she worries at it slightly, an artists eye giving way to that of a new lover and Cat thinks she can make out the ways Kara wants to touch her—she’s never been anything but utterly open, utterly readable, and this is no exception. 

They settle into the bed together, side by side—and the mood seems to fizzle out. Neither of them know where to go from there, what the other really wants, and they lay uncomfortably still until Cat clicks her tongue. 

“Come here,” she demands. “Come _here_ , you insufferable hero.” She tugs on Kara’s arm until it’s awkwardly looped around her waist and, as she continues to talk she is pleased to note that Kara relaxes until she’s lightly holding her. “You and your utterly insufferable respectful, do-gooder, chaste and honest and true rubbish,” she grumbles, and Kara huffs a laugh onto her collarbone where she buries her face in Cat’s shoulder. 

It should feel strange that they have become this close so fast, but it doesn’t. It feels like this should have happened earlier. Cat’s stomach swoops when she realises that _she_ had put a stop to their closeness, that perhaps, if she had been braver, smarter, better, this may have happened earlier. Before the very end. She rubs a hand up from Kara’s elbow to her shoulder and down again. 

They lay there for a time. Then, 

“I’m not tired at _all_ ,” Kara tells her, laughing, and she pulls back a little to see Cat’s smile. 

“No, neither am I.”

Kara shrugs and returns to her place. It’s a few more moments of near painful awareness of Kara’s body—her long, golden legs, her hair cascading like some Romantic princess, the warmth of their bodies together—before she realises that soft lips are beginning to press the tiniest, most gentle kisses against the skin of her neck. 

“Kara.”

“Can we just,” she grazes her nose up Cat’s throat and Cat sighs, tilting her head back to give Karaaccess. One she doesn’t take advantage of, though she hesitates and lingers, lips close enough for Cat to not be sure whether or not she’s being touched. “Just go with it?”

“Anything you want,” Cat murmurs. 

Kara freezes. 

“What is it?” Cat looks to the window, sure she will see an enemy or some sickly light in the sky, something to suggest danger. But it’s just Kara looking back at her. “What’s wrong?”

“Is this—is this just because I might die? Is that why you’re doing this?”

Die. 

She’s said it again. 

Cat _knows_ that it’s possible and the idea of the invincible girl dying seems so much more plausible when she can feel her heart beating, dig her fingers into the soft of her arm. She shivers. 

“Is that why you’re doing this?” she returns. 

“No!” She frowns. “A little. No, just…the speed. I’m not really a sex on the first date kind of girl. Not that I don’t think people should do that, if that’s what they want, I totally respect everyone’s desire to have sex at _any_ point in their relationships or not at all!” Cat lifts her eyebrows. “I might never get another chance!” Kara blurts out. She shuffles away and pushes up until she's sitting back on her heels and her hands twist in her lap. “You said be _selfish_ and I’m, I don’t, I don’t really _do_ that. I _like_ helping other people, I like putting them first, that’s what makes me happy. But I’m—I might _die,_ Cat, and I, I maybe I want something! Just for me!” she snaps, not at Cat but out toward the window, and her eyes are dark and turbulent and she’s restless. “I wasn't something thats _just_ for me—is, it is wrong to want that?”

“No.”

“But it is selfish.”

Cat rolls her eyes and pushes up as well, settles herself back against her headboard. “Kara, selfish isn’t wrong. You are allowed to _want_. You are allowed, even, to _have_ things. And you are most certainly allowed to put yourself first.”

Kara stares at her for a long time. She sits so still, so very very still, and Cat waits. 

Finally, Kara murmurs, “I don’t want to die. And…” her voice cracks and, softly, she says, “I don’t want to feel alone anymore.” Very slowly, she moves closer until her knees are pressed against Cat’s thigh. Still slowly— _so_ slowly—she swings a leg over both of Cat’s and waits there patiently for Cat to look up at her face. Which takes some time, when Cat’s gaze catches on her beautiful legs and then on the arms that form a bracket around her. Kara dips her head. “Cat?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I kiss you? That’s all I really want.”

Cat reaches up for Kara, curls a hand around the back of her neck. 

“You deserve everything, Kara. You are good,” she presses a kiss to her cheek, “and kind,” and onto her other cheek, “and brave.” She presses a chaste kiss to Kara’s lips and lingers, hearing the small sob that works its way out of Kara. She places her hand over Kara’s heart and smiles. “You say observation ends at twelve noon?”

Kara nods.   


“You have ten hours. What do you want to do?”

Kara's fingers slip under Cat’s shirt as she kisses her slow and deep. They stroke up the sides of her ribs. 

“When I first came to Earth, I was afraid to touch.” Her fingers play lightly over her skin, swirling tingling lines. “I was afraid that I would break things. Hurt someone.”

Cat swallows. 

“My sister came home one day after our dad died. She was lonely a lot but that day was worse. I don’t remember why,” Kara tells her, distant, a little furrow between her eyebrows. Her nose skims Cat’s jaw. She sits back so she can focus and Cat blinks until she’s listening properly. “We weren’t very close then, not really. Not like we are now. Then, I watched Eliza hug her and Alex…her face… She relaxed. She sunk into Eliza’s arms and she looked so _peaceful._ I remember,” Kara’s fingers dig into Cat’s lower back and drag slow lines of pressure up. Cat arches, breath stuttering. “I remember being held by my mother back on Krypton. It’s hard to remember everything about a planet, its culture, food, the way it smells, the way they talked there. But,” Kara curls her open palms around Cat’s shoulders. 

Cat is fixed in place—more than the hands holding her, more than the absolute power inside Kara, more than the words, the story, that intrigues Cat, more than all of that is the way that Kara is looking at her. Deep and thoughtful, and Cat is aware that she is working towards something—she recognises the way Kara is building her story towards some final point and though the steady stroking of Kara’s fingers makes her eyelids flutter, she wants very badly to hear what Kara has to say. 

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget what it feels like to be at home with someone,” Kara murmurs. 

“ _Kara_ ,” Cat whispers, breath hitching as Kara’s fingers curl around her neck and those lips lower teasingly close to hers, brush a cool breath against her skin.

“When I touch you,” Kara tells her, a gentle secret caught between their bodies, “I feel like I have a whole world in my hands,” and she kisses her slowly, then, and thoroughly. 

Cat winds her hand into her hair, exults in Kara’s whimper. She scrapes her nails down her neck, prompting a shuddering cry out of her, and that’s another secret Cat will treasure, as well as the sounds Kara makes when Cat claims patches of her throat as her own. 

Kara is breathing heavily when she pulls away. She is dark, silhouetted, and the lights of the city outside illuminate her, fleck her hair with gold. Cat looks at her and she sees her: an angel—a girl; a hero—a girl; an alien with dark eyes and power written into every line of her body—a _girl_ , with the sweetest lips and the most generous heart. 

“I won’t let them take another world from me,” Kara promises her, and she settles her weight into Cat’s lap, and cups her cheek with a sure hand and kisses her, long into the morning.

When they slow and stop, Cat wraps the hero in her arms. They do not talk about Kara's heavy heart or that Cat holds tighter than she needs to, until her arms ache, because Kara needs to be held and Cat needs to believe that she is somehow helping. 

The only other comfort they have is that Kara's phone doesn't ring once and they are allowed this time together. When the sun rises and spills blood red over the desert and over the city, they try not to read too much into it, try not to take it as an omen of things to come.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid this one has quite a bit of the same stuff that happened in the show so I'm sorry if parts of it feel too familiar. Also, it's a bit choppy but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

“Your latte, Miss Grant.” 

She tries not to twitch—or fidget or stare at Cat or make a face or smile too brightly or smile with teeth or be too tall or hunch too much or make eye contact for too long a period at a time or any of the other habits that Cat doesn’t like first thing in the morning—and holds out the coffee for her boss. Cat. Cat, her boss. Her _boss_ , Miss Grant. 

Cat’s fingers don’t brush hers, she doesn’t make long, purposeful and meaningful eye contact full of longing. There is no sign that they spent most of the evening together—no sign from Cat that they kissed, no sign of anything that say said to one another, no sign of anything beyond boss and assistant. 

“Lots of work to do, Kiera,” Cat drawls as she strides into her office. “Chop chop.”

“Yes, Miss Grant.” Kara snatches up her tablet from her desk and scurries in behind her. 

“So.” Cat drops her bag on her desk and snatches off her sunglasses. Her hip pops out to the side and, for one long moment, Cat looks her over. 

Kara stands very still and waits. She knows Cat well enough to know that the woman is examining her—she knows very well, too, what Cat will find. 

Not rumpled. Clean. Clearly uninjured. 

Cat’s face gives nothing away when she says, “Should I be expecting any tales of heroics from this morning?” but she doesn’t look at Kara and she drops down into her seat and rifles needlessly through her top drawer for a pen that isn’t there. 

Kara steps forward and plucks it off her desk, holds it out. 

“No. No heroics.”

“Then,” Cat purses her lips and frowns at the offering but, after a moment, she takes the pen, “I assume you had a good reason for sneaking out.”

“I left a note.”

“Mm, yes.” Cat narrows her eyes. “ _Called away. See you at work. K_.” She doesn’t sound impressed.

“I’m…sorry?”

“Carter would have liked to see you before he was sent away.” Cat opens her laptop—she doesn’t notice when Kara’s shoulders droop but when she looks up, she sees it. “He understood,” she relents just a touch and Kara nods. 

“It was early. I had to go.” She looks down to the floor. After last night, this should be easy but it _isn’t_ —Cat had held her for hours, they had _kissed_ , and now they’re standing in the office and everyone is milling around like normal but it’s not normal, everything has changed, everything is about to change. She steps closer to Cat’s desk and lowers her tablet. She doesn’t lift her eyes. “I wanted to say goodbye,” she says softly. “But you’d just fallen asleep. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Kiera.” Cat rolls her eyes. “I’m going to give you some advice.” She lifts her eyebrows like she’s waiting for Kara to say thank you or _something_ and Kara tries not to smile when she nods. “If you ever leave me to wake up to just a note again when you told me, hmm, _three_ times that you suspect you will _die_ , you won’t get the chance to sleep in my bed again. Clear?”

Kara eases closer still, around the corner of the desk. She knows Cat is going for brisk and distant and a little mocking but… “I won’t,” she promises. “I’ll wake you next time.” The words sound hollow—she’s still not sure that there will be a next time but she wants one so she lets herself cling to it, cling to the promise as flimsy as it is, and she hopes. 

“Good.” Cat slaps a hand out onto her desk calendar and drags it towards herself. She peers down at it over her glasses. “So what was so urgent that you had to whisk away in the middle of the night?”

“Actually, it was three-thirt—” She stops herself. “You don’t care and you said that for effect not accuracy.” Cat rolls her eyes. “Right. Important. Alex wanted to debrief me about what they found.”

“She couldn’t do that over the phone?”

“She wanted me to get some sun too,” Kara shrugs, and she is glad that Alex is looking out for her because she _does_ feel a lot better—warm, strong, settled in her own skin as much as she can be today. She likes the way being fully charged makes her feel, even if having to lie under the lamps is the most boring thing in the world and makes her restless and fidgety. 

“And what did she find out?”

Kara hesitates, which is a mistake because Cat hates hesitation and she looks up with sharp, narrowed eyes. 

“Well?”

“Not much more than they had before.”

“And you so _desperately_ needed to be debriefed because…?”

“Because my sister wanted to see me and talk to me. And because,” Kara holds out a small earpiece. “This is for you.”

“My BlueTooth?” Cat takes it, even as she sneers—it’s a look of confusion on Cat, and Kara shouldn’t find it endearing but she does. 

“It’s been adjusted a bit. They made it into an ion disruptor. Theoretically, it should keep you from having your mind controlled.” Kara grins when Cat looks at it with far more interest, turns it over in her hands. “Also,” she says quickly, “Alex just wanted to check in with me, I guess.”

“Mm.” Cat clips her earpiece into place. “Yes, she cares for you very much.” She looks at Kara with an expression that is almost a frown but carries no anger. It is thoughtful and examining and very quickly hidden behind another, more real frown. “This had better do more than just _theoretically_ protect my brain, Kiera. I’ll have you know it has been insured.”

Kara grins. “Yes, Miss Grant.” The humour—biting, quick as it is—is _funny_ and very Cat and it gives Kara the courage to chance a quick touch, skim a perfect loose ringlet behind Cat’s ear. It’s almost too fast for Cat to feel, let alone see, so she doesn’t worry about any curious eyes that might have caught the gesture.

“Well.” Cat clears her throat and pulls her head away very slightly. “How will we know? If it works?”

Kara is about to tell her they’ll just have to wait and see—a statement that never goes down well with Cat—when the woman crumples backwards into her chair, cries out. She claps a hand over her other ear, the one without the earpiece, and cries out again, more of a whimper. With eyes squeezed shut, she doesn’t see Kara kneeling by her side until she grabs at her knee. 

“Cat? Cat, what is it? What’s wrong?”

Lord, she thinks. If Lord did something to the ion disruptors she is going to body slam him into the Pacific. 

Cat winces, pulls her hand away from her ear slowly and then drops it down in her lap when the pain, whatever it was, doesn’t return. “You said Non would attack at noon?” Cat asks, low and voice still tense with pain. Kara nods and Cat sighs. “I think you may have overestimated how interested your uncle was in keeping to schedule.” 

“What do you mean?” Her whole self is focused on Cat—her face still isn’t free from pain and now and again Cat will reach up and touch the first two fingers of her left hand to the top of her cheek, that spot just in front of her ear and _press_ —and Kara doesn’t quite understand the words. 

Cat sighs again and reaches over to her, touches a hand to her chin and turns her head to the open office.

Kara blinks and then stands quickly. Everyone is still and quiet and _blank_ and Kara can’t breathe. Because if, if Non has begun and if everyone is affected by Myriad then she failed, she was _wrong_ and she’s doomed everyone and —“No,” she whispers. “No, no, it’s only nine— _no_.” Worst of all, all she can think about, all she can see is Astra. Astra—alone, in her pod, in the deep darkness with no escape is all she can see, and then it is her own face and the deep cold of space—and then there is a quiet crackle and she looks down to see her fingers jutting right through the shattered screen of her tablet. 

“That’ll be coming out of your paychecks,” Cat says, coming to stand next to her in the doorway of her office.

Kara drops the broken device on her desk. 

“So what now?”

“I—”

“Presumably,” Cat says, “once Scully found out that it was mind control, she was working on a way to counteract it? Since there clearly wasn’t a surplus of ion...disruptors.”

“Yeah. They were working on it.”

“And?”

“I don’t know. Alex was supposed to call me once she figured it out but I guess she can’t now. Because she’s probably been mind controlled because I _stupidly_ insisted that he would play by the rules.” Kara closes her hands into harsh fists and she’s almost shaking with the need to punch a car or Lord’s train or Non’s _face_ —she freezes when Cat’s fingers lock around her wrist.

“Anything you may happen to break will also come out of your paycheck, Kiera. Which will be difficult to explain for both of us.” Cat’s thumb strokes once, across the patch of skin on her wrist that suddenly feels like it’s made of exposed wires, all sparking. The sparking doesn’t stop but it doesn’t feel as disorienting, as distracting, as full-body-prickling, when Cat comes to stand in front of her and grips her wrist a little more tightly and looks at her right in the eyes. Her eyes demand focus. “Tell me what she told you about the properties of the weapon.”

“I—”

“ _Focus_. You can do this, Kara.”

Kara nods once, firmly, and she closes her eyes and draws in a breath and calls up the memory of her meeting that morning with Alex. She sinks into it—heat on her arms, body, stripped down to shorts and a shirt to maximise exposure, the warmth of the yellow lamps, her sisters soothing voice all around her—and she lets her mouth fall open and repeats it word for word. 

“ _Are the sun lamps on high enough Kara—can you feel that—how about that—I’m going to leave it at this level we want you to be on your A game today—facing Non how do you feel about that—I have faith in you Kara I always have—this isn’t your fault remember that this is Non’s fault, he is the one attacking these people—no matter what happens you are a hero and I love you—I’m going to turn these up a little how does that feel—ugh Lord is here he’s in the next room no don’t move you’re going to dislodge everything—I can’t believe Hank is letting him work with us I don’t care how smart that man thinks he is I’m never going to forgive him for what he did with Bizarro and those girls—we’ve been analysing the code all night—yes, Kara, I got some sleep don’t worry about me that’s my job—he found something and using Winn’s decryption key we think we understand the intent Lord can tell you the exact parts of the brain that are affected but essentially it shuts down sections of the brain to make people totally compliant and we’re thinking we can come up with a temporary cure adrenaline maybe or as high a dose of hope as we can administer—oh please you did grade ten science with the rest of us Kara you know that those are just chemicals produced in the body it’s the same with love it’s just a cocktail of chemicals—I’m not being cynical you’re just ridiculous why_ —”

“That’s enough, Kara,” Cat says gently and squeezes Kara’s wrist.

Kara blinks and ducks her eyes to the ground. She doesn’t do it often—she knows how odd it can be for her to mimic a voice and to have their words imprinted in her memory but it does have its uses. And she doesn’t mind so much when Cat is looking at her appraisingly, like she’s done something clever and _fascinating_. And not in her ‘I can use this’ way but in her, dare Kara think it, ‘Carter has done something wonderful’ kind of way, and it’s not the right time for this at all but Kara lets herself think for the tiniest moment how nice it was to be held, how nice it was to be close to Cat, how nice it was to be _wanted_ by Cat, and she lets herself think how nice it might be to be someone who Cat considers special. 

“Hope,” Cat says, staring at her. Through her. Kara can tell that she’s turning the words over in her head. “Can you repeat that? What Scully said about hope?”

 “Her name is _Alex_ ,” Kara corrects her, and hurries on because she’s still not used to being allowed to correct Cat Grant. “ _We can come up with a temporary cure adrenaline or as high a dose of hope as we can administer_.”

“Hmm.”

“What are you—hold on,” Kara gasps, because her phone is ringing and none of her calls were answered by Alex or the DEO and she’s hoping, she’s hoping that Alex is somehow okay. “Alex?”

“‘Fraid not, Supergirl.”

“Max, what a surprise that you’re not one of the mindless drones.”

“Your sarcasm and distrust is noticed, believe me, but we have more important things to do right now.” He sounds distracted and, beneath that, perhaps the tiniest bit afraid. “Look, I just left the DEO—they assumed he would honour the deal,”

“Who did?”

“Everyone. Everyone at the DEO was affected. They’re letting the prisoners out, disrupting the barriers, arming themselves—”

“But _you’re_ safe,” Kara growls, and Cat lifts her eyebrows. 

“I was testing my comms. I know you don’t believe me, I understand, but I called to warn you. You need to shut down the DEO.”

Kara lifts a hand to her forehead and rubs. She _hates_ it when Lord is right. “I’ll be there soon. Get to CatCo. Cat has her disruptor on too—for once, you can work together to come up with a way of fixing this.”

“And the DEO?”

“I’ll think of something.” She taps her ear to end the call and, knowing that no one in the office is paying the slightest bit of attention, she spins into her quick change. “Cat?”

“What do you need?”

“Stay here. Maxwell Lord is on his way. You two stay safe—I’ll need your brains and your input by the end of the day, I’m sure.” Cat nods. “General Lane is running drills in the desert. If you contact him,” Kara writes down how, “you can let him know what’s going on. And see if he can find anything out that can help us. How much of National City is affected, what he can see going on. And he should probably set up a quarantine.”

“And the President?” 

“Sure. Let her know too.” Kara spares a glance for her friends—they are just sitting there at their desks, and she has to hope for the time being that they’ll be safe. Her sister and the DEO aren’t, though, so that has to be her focus. One step at a time. That’s all she can do. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she promises, and Cat—already on line with the General—nods. 

* * *

For being up against a whole team of agents trained in finding and taking down aliens, Kara thinks she’s doing pretty well holding her own. She fought her way—as gently as she could—to the control room and managed to shut everything down.

Well. 

She might have broken some things but the human technology still isn’t as familiar as everything she had back on Krypton and red buttons mean something different here than they did there—it was safest, really, just to make sure no one could do any more damage. 

One alien tries to get out, her cage damaged. She looks a bit like a rhinoceros and has skin as thick as one and Kara’s hands hurt very faintly from the punches it took to convince her that escape _really_ wasn’t worth it, not with Kara looking at her with burning eyes. She allows Kara to guide her back to her cage and the door closes and really, Kara thinks, she should really be getting paid for this.   

She heaves out an enormous breath and speeds into the control room again, hoping that the many screens will somehow switch from darkness to something that can help her, something like security footage or _anything_ that helps her find Alex. The one agent she hasn’t run into. 

Which, as time passes and Kara has literally had to stop every single agent and handcuff them to the railing, feels less and less like a fluke and more and more like some really horrible plan Non has in store for her. 

It all becomes clear when she’s cuffing the most recent agent and her fingers slip and fumble with the lock. She drops a little more heavily onto his back with her knee when he tries to take advantage of her sudden weakness and he gasps, finally laying still. 

She checks quickly to make sure that he’s not dead or broken.  

“Alex,” Kara says soothingly, lifting her hands in surrender, submission. She stands and turns, very slowly, to face her sister. “Lucky last, I hope?” she grins.

The safety clicks very purposefully to _off_ and Kara pretends that she’s not afraid. There is only so much that she can do, however, and the green glow of kryptonite has a certain draw. Sick and dangerous but it demands to be acknowledged.

It’s hard to drag her eyes away but finally she looks up and into her sister’s eyes. They are as warm as ever, the same as ever. When Alex speaks, it’s her voice.

But it’s not her. 

“Indigo told me what happened,” she says, conversational and quiet. She twitches the gun and Kara obeys the silent direction, stepping away from the railing of agents and away from the control panel. “I wasn’t sure I believed her. I thought maybe _you_ had killed Astra. That, I could understand. You are stronger than we gave you credit for. And Astra,” Alex’s lips pull back in an unfamiliar sneer. “She has been weak for you since the moment she found you still alive.”

Kara swallows. Tries to inch a little closer to her sister. Alex moves her finger from ready to the trigger in response. 

“Don’t. I can see what she sees, there is no point in trying to trick me.”

Kara grinds her teeth and takes a steadying breath. 

“Where’s Hank?”

“The Martian?” Alex shrugs dismissively. “He has his weaknesses.”

Kara doesn’t know what that means—nothing _good_ , obviously—but there are a hundred other things to focus on and the first one, the most important, is the fact that this is her sister and she knows that she is stronger than this. 

“Alex, _fight_ him,” Kara demands, furious now mostly at Non for doing this but a little at Alex, and herself maybe, because she can see her, Alex is _right there_ and she’s not listening and Kara can’t _make_ her. Alex laughs, right in her face, when she sees her eyes burn bright. “I know you can do it, Alex. Please.”  

Alex laughs. “I can hear her thoughts too. Get out of my head. Please, she’s my _sister_.” No matter what Alex is thinking, how hard she’s trying, it’s not enough. Kara knows it. 

Alex empties the first bullet into Kara’s shoulder. 

Kara stops the scream in her throat, mostly. A high whine escapes. 

Alex’s eyes sting with tears. 

“You should take it out. I’ve heard this mineral—what do your humans call it? _Kryptonite_? It does terrible things if you leave it in.”

Kara winces and slings her arm across her chest. With her uninjured arm, she digs her fingers into the wound and her breath comes out in sharp, quiet pants as her fingers literally push into her flesh. Once she pulls it out, she knows she’ll be fine. But until then, this is the worst pain she’s ever felt and the feeling of her own blood coating her fingers, her own flesh giving underneath her probing, makes her sick to her stomach. 

It clatters to the ground. 

Too close. 

She kicks it away and feels her skin and muscle start to knit itself together once more. 

“Who knew humans could be so resourceful? It bodes well for their future,” he says through Alex. 

Kara ignores him. She has to stop Alex but she’s afraid that if she hits her, she’ll do more than just knock her unconscious. But if she can just…it would be a _risk_ but if she could reach the Kryptonite emitters, she could make herself weaker and stop Alex without hurting her. 

She inches toward the panel, keeping her eyes fixed on Alex and hoping that she—and Non—won’t be able to read her intentions. 

Alex laughs. 

“No. No, I don’t think so. We want this to be a fair fight, don’t we? Sister against sister.” Alex smiles and she shoots the panel and Kara breathes in, letting her Supergirl confidence overtake her. Because she’s about to do something _incredibly_ stupid and reckless and she can’t let herself be worried about her sister.

Alex is a soldier. She killed Astra because she’s a soldier, she has lost people, agents, and worked hard and Kara isn’t about to invalidate everything Alex has worked so hard for by letting her kill her here and now. 

“You want a fight, Non?” Kara spreads her arms wide and grins, thinking of how furious Alex is going to be with her when she’s back to her normal self. “Do you really think you can win?”

“Dear niece, you have your weakness glowing across your face bright as Rao’s light. There is nothing you would do to hurt this human.”

“What we do is more important than any one person I love,” she says, but she’s not saying it to Non. She’s saying it to the part of Alex she knows—hopes—is still in there. 

She hopes she understands. 

“Let’s see about that, shall we?”

Alex lifts her gun and Kara gulps. She can’t say she’s looking forward to the pain aspect of her admittedly very stupid plan. Fear flickers over her face very quickly and, Kara thinks, something shifts in Alex’s eyes. Not much, not enough, but _something_. 

The barrel of the gun twitches. 

Kara leaps for her and it’s a miracle—or maybe it was Alex—that the bullet only hits her shoulder. The sharp, sharp pain tears through her again and _Rao_ it’s both luck and terrible that it lodges there against her bone. A blessing, sort of, because it means that she’s weakened enough that she’s not going to have to do this again. 

“Sorry,” she says, and grabs the gun crushing it in her hand and tossing it to the side. “Sorry,” she says again and then she punches Alex as gently as she can in the temple, sending her eyes rolling back into her head. Kara catches her before she can fall and she eases her down, curls her hands around Alex’s face. She brushes careful fingers over the already bruising point and checks to see if her skull is broken or fractured but it seems to be whole still and she hopes that means Alex will be alright. “ _I’m sorry_ ,” she murmurs and bends to kiss Alex’s forehead. That apology is just for her. Alex can’t hear it, but Kara needed to say it. 

“That was unexpected, Kara Zor-El. I can see you are learning what it is to fight.” Non’s face is plastered over the DEO screens. “But Myriad grants me the minds of all your humans. Tell me, how many do you think you can really save?” 

The screen cuts to black and Kara flops back to sit on the ground next to Alex. For the second time in fewer minutes than she would like, she is pulling a bullet from her shoulder and she tries not to cry, though the ache is spreading and it _hurts_ and her fingers shake. When it is out, she flicks it far away and it hits the ground, sound ringing quietly in the far corner of the room, metallic and chilling.She can hear it perfectly, of course. 

What Non had said was very obviously a threat and she hauls herself to her feet. She doesn’t have time to be scared or tired. Not yet. She slaps a hand to her ear and answers the faint buzzing. 

“Supergirl.”

“Non is at CatCo.”

Kara flinches at the still tender tug of her arm when she lifts Alex and she pushes the sensation away. 

“Don’t engage him,” Kara commands. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

She drops Alex off at her apartment—there are a change of clothes and a stash of weapons she can take her pick from when she wakes and it might not be the safest place to be at the moment but it’ll have to do. 

“Max.”

“I’m not at CatCo yet, not all of us have supersp—”

“Shut up. Do you have more of those ion blockers?”

“Two more. Where am I headed?”

“My apartment. I assume you know where that is?”

“Of course.”

“Of course. Alex is there. Get her an icepack too. I had to get…persuasive.” Kara hesitates. “Make sure she’s okay.”

“I will, Supergirl. You’ll have your biggest fan back in no time.”

As soon as she hands up, her phone rings again. 

“Not to appear _clingy_ ,” Cat sniffs, and Kara easily detects the waver of unease in her voice, “but where the hell are you?”

Kara doesn’t answer. Instead, she pushes a little faster and dives through the open window of the office to land in a crouch in front of her.  

“Are you alright?” she asks softly.

“I’m fine. Bored. He’s been monologuing,” Cat says, with that sniff again, and her eyes are focused on her phone like Non isn’t standing in front of her, in the middle of her office. When Kara steps in front of her, Cat places a hand on her back and her fingers curl in the fabric of her cape. 

“One last chance to join me. Take your place at the forefront of the mission, Kara Zor-El. You would save your planet. You could _rule_ your planet.”

“One last chance to surrender.”

He barks a short laugh and shakes his head. “There is no surrender. My work is just beginning. Soon, the human race will all be working together in harmony. Looking after this planet they pretend to love so much even as they dig into its core and drag out its guts fistful by bloody fistful. Parade it around,” he spits, “decorate their buildings, wrap it around their necks a tightening noose.” He spreads his hands to encompass the quietly working people. “They have peace now.”

“They have no choice.”

“ _Choice_?” Non snaps. Kara takes a step back, in front of Cat—Non’s eyes flash with heat and menace. “What choice were they given on Krypton? Stop their _greed_ or watch as their planet dies. And what did they choose?” he hisses. “Greed. Destruction. An end of Krypton, the jewel of Rao’s crown.”

“They were wrong. All of them.”

“Alura—”

“My mother among them. _Alura_ was wrong. Is that what you need to hear, Non?” Kara asks. “Fine. My mother was wrong, maybe the worst of all of them. She knew what was going to happen and she lied to them all.” She sees Non swallow hard—he does not soften at all but he manages a small nod and his eyes return to their normal colour. “But just because they were wrong doesn’t mean that this is right. This isn’t the right way to do this, Non. It wasn’t right back home,” Kara falters for a moment because home feels foreign in her mouth. “Not back home, and not here.”

“People need to be controlled. If they will not make the right decision for themselves, I will see to it that they are set down the path of salvation.”

“Oh spare us your misguided nobility,” Cat mutters and Kara hisses.

Non hardens. “I have more work to do. Myriad will be functional worldwide soon enough.” She steps forward. “I won’t let you stop me, Kara Zor-El. I had hoped you would join me. Honour your aunts vision.”

“ _Honour_ her?” Cat’s hand presses hard against her back but Kara is so angry she barely notices. “You dare speak to me about honouring her memory when you _abandoned_ her to the darkness?"  

“Sacrifices must be made.”

Kara thinks she might be shaking. “Astra was on the wrong side of this war. As you are. I will stop you, Non, and in the end I hope that it will haunt you for the rest of your days that you abandoned the woman you swore to uphold in all things.”

“As it will haunt you that it is your own family who struck her down,” Non returns. 

Kara doesn’t deny it. Instead, she takes another step toward him. “I will stop you.”

“I doubt that. You care about these humans too much.” He nods to Winn, who stands. “Prove me wrong, if you’d like.”

//

Three jump.

She catches two of them in time.

//

She drops them neatly back into their office. James returns to his desk. Winn stands and smiles. 

“In case you think you might like to come after me now,” he says, Non says, but it’s Winn’s smiling face and Kara _hates_. “I have one last gift for you. You protected the mother. She was my first choice. After all, it would be balanced then. Your heart taken, as mine was. But you kept her safe.”

Kara stares at her best friend and hopes he’s not about to say what she thinks he is.

“Tell me, Kara Zor-El, where is the boy?”

Cat grips at her cape and Kara turns to her, blood rushing in her ears. 

“Where did he go?” she croaks out. 

“His father’s.” She’s already calling his number.

No one picks up.

“Try Carter’s phone.” Kara whips out her own phone, pressing her speed dial one. “Come on, come on, pick _up_. Come on, Alex.”

 “Kara,” Alex answers, her name half a sob. “Kara, I am so sorry—”

 “Later. I need you to find Carter for me Alex, right now. I put a tracker in his watch, can you find him?” It’s pure talent mixed with years of practice that means that Alex can understand what she’s saying, even though the words are coming out faster than normal. “The app on your phone, I synced them,” 

“I know, I’ve got it.” Kara hears her swallow. “I, two trackers. One in CatCo—that’s Cat. The other…”

“Tell me.”

“He,” Alex swallows again. “He’s at his school.”

“Okay,” Kara says. “Thanks,” she says. Her lips feel numb. If Non hurts him— _all those children_ —she can’t imagine, she can’t think, she can’t fathom it all those _children_

“Kara?”

“He’s at school,” Kara tells Cat, and she shakes herself out of her own mind and out of the grip Cat has on her cape. “I’ll bring him back safe, Cat. I promise.”

The ground crumples beneath her when she pushes up into the sky, faster than ever before. 

//

He’s standing in the middle of a sea of students—the auditorium is full to the brim of these small, blinking, _still_ bodies and it’s so wrong Kara wants to retch. Children fidget and scratch and itch and chatter and smile and sing and honestly, mostly they do anything but stand still, and this is wrong, it’s so wrong every bit of her is screaming out to find Non and make him pay for turning her children into these...these _drones_. 

But she doesn’t let it show on her face, and she doesn’t leave. 

She picks her way slowly, carefully, through them and they don’t stop her or really even look at her but don’t pay attention to her either and she’s terrified that she’ll step on them, hurt them, and she very gently urges them apart so she can move through them. 

Right to the middle, where she can hear that heartbeat. She one she knows—the one she loves. 

“Hey Carter,” she says when she reaches him. She’s never been so happy to see his untidy curls, his narrow face. “Are you okay?”

“Overpopulation is a huge issue on this planet,” Carter says in his teen voice, cracking oddly amidst the solemnity of the moment. 

Kara hates it. Hates that Non has taken her people—their faces, their bodies, their voices—to work against her. It _hurts_. 

And Carter… 

She loves him deep in the hollows of her, around her beating heart, in the crooks of elbows that never held him as a baby, in her mouth that works to form his name, in the gaps of her fingers where his fingers fit—she _loves_ him and this _hurts_. 

“How many of these children will die from one bomb, do you think?” Carter sighs, glances around. “They’re all so…fragile.”

Kara reaches out a hand and Carter takes a step back. 

“Chemicals are very unstable and you have a smart boy here. He knew exactly what ingredients he needed. And very little urging.”

“Carter,” Kara says firmly. It hadn’t worked with Alex but she can’t just not try. “Carter, look at me. You know who I am. You know me. You know all these people.” Carter just stares. He’s never been good at connecting with people, Kara remembers, and fear feels like slipping, like losing control, looks like two hundred children skeletons, sounds like the rush of blood in two hundred little bodies. She blinks, clenches her jaw, and focuses on Carter. Just Carter. “It’s me,” she says. “Supergirl.” She adopts her heroic pose and Carter blinks. It’s not working and Kara is running out of time and options and hope. 

All she wants is for him to be safe and she's scared that when time runs out, she’s going to pick him. 

“Carter,” she tries, just one last time she tells herself, though she doesn’t know quite what else she could try. “Look at me, buddy,” she urges, and she softens her pose and kneels until her face is level with his. “Look at me. Come on, buddy, come back to me. You know me.” She tilts her head. “Carter?”

Was there… She swears she sees some sign of recognition. Hopes ignites in her chest—she swears she saw Alex too, look at her just like that, just before she had purposefully shot her shoulder. Instead of her heart. Kara lets herself relax further because Carter doesn’t know this harder version of her, he knows Kara and Supergirl-Kara. She tugs her cape to cover the S on her chest and Carter _stares_ at her, the tiniest crinkle dipping between his eyebrows. 

“Remember, Carter, when it was just the two of us? I brought you pizza and sat on that couch that everyone hates.” He frowns. “You destroyed me at Wii Sports, I almost had you at archery though,” he frowns harder and she keeps going, fighting to keep her words slow and steady. “We sat in the beanbag in your room and stared at the ceiling and I told you about my sister, my family, and you told me about Thanksgiving with your dad. Do you remember that, Carter?” 

She thinks, maybe, that he nods. 

“You were all alone and so brave, wanting to keep it to yourself. You didn’t want to hurt your mom, I know. I know that Carter. I _get_ it. But I’m here and you don’t have to be alone or scared or brave because I can be brave for you, okay buddy?” She smiles at him and nods. “It’s me, Carter. It’s Kara.”

Carter stares and then, as Kara holds her breath, his body tightens and fear rushes in. 

“K-Kara?”

“Hey, I’ve got you,” she says, reaches out and wraps a hand around the bottle in his hand, keeping it still. Grips his shoulder with the other when he starts to shake. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

“It’s,” his eyes dart from her to the bottle in his hand and they are wide with fear. She can smell it, his fear, sudden and thick and acrid and she _never_ wants him to feel like that again. “It’s a chemical bomb. It’ll go off if, if I shake it.”

“So don’t shake it,” she suggests, grinning, and he tries to smile back, tries to roll his eyes. 

“Good idea, Supergirl.” He gulps. Glances at the bottle. “It might go off by itself. The chemicals,” his breath shudders out. “They’re, um, not stable.” 

“Okay. How long do we have?” she asks, calm, and smoothly shifts him behind her so that his hand is wrapped around her waist and the bottle close to her chest. He drops his head onto her back.

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.” Kara holds their hands very steady and then reaches back for him. She lifts them carefully up over the crowd and out the doors, out into the grassed courtyard. “Okay, Carter, I need you to take your hand away,” she says, hearing the mixture start to sizzle and pop menacingly inside the plastic and he rips his hand away and she jumps straight upwards, curling her body and cape around the bomb. 

She doesn’t get that far away—the blast is strong enough to send her right back down and all the breath in her lungs is knocked out of her when she lands, a crater forming beneath her. Her ears are ringing—she presses her hands hard against them. 

“—bleeding!” 

She catches the tail end of Carter’s sentence and uncurls herself slowly. 

“What?”

“You’re bleeding,” he repeats, frantically. “Kara, your ears!”

“I’ll be fine,” she promises, and stands slowly, taking inventory. There is a large stain on the front of her suit and she freezes it with a breath and scrapes it off before it can do any damage. Some tears, in her sleeve where she was shot. Her ears are still ringing faintly and when she touches them, the tips of her fingers come away red. She steps towards him and does her best not to stumble. “Sorry about the smell and the chemicals but we gotta go. Your mom is worried.”

“ _Mom_ ,” Carter gasps, and he jumps into her arms. 

While they’re flying back to CatCo, she hears the explosions. Judging from the way Carter gasps and grips onto her more tightly, he hears them too. She feels him twist a little and when his fingers scrabble at her neck, she knows that he sees them.  

“What’s going on?” he whispers. 

Kara almost doesn’t answer. She wraps her arms the tiniest bit more tightly around him—so he can feel the rush that came over her, the need to protect him—and her voice shakes only a little when she says, “Nothing good. But I’ve got you, okay?” He nods into her shoulder. “I’ve got you.”

CatCo looms ahead of them and, there in the window, there is a pale Cat Grant. Pacing. 

She flings open the balcony door when she spots them and she pales further when she sees Carter held softly in her arms, doesn’t let up until Carter is sitting on the couch and repeating to her, “I’m fine, mom, I promise, I’m fine, I’m okay.”

Cat presses a shaking kiss to his head and nods, smoothes her hands down his cheeks. 

“You got him a disruptor?” Max asks. He’s lounging in Cat’s throne—her desk chair—and Kara glares at him. There’s something in front of him, a box, and it’s lined with lead and it gleams silver white and she feels something sick and fearful settle around her shoulders. 

“What’s that?"

“Did you give him the last disruptor?” Max asks again instead of replying and Kara narrows her eyes. 

“No. What’s in the box?”

“I need to check him out,” Max says, dodging the question again, and Kara steps between Cat and Carter and Max. “I need to, Supergirl. This could be a trick.”

“It’s not a trick,” Carter says quietly. “I’m not, I’m not a trick.”

“I know,” Kara says, and she reaches back so he can hold her hand. 

“Well maybe I should check you out instead, Supergirl.”

She shoots Lord the filthiest look she can muster. “Save the lines for after we save the world. Or not at all, preferably.”

“I actually mean because you’re bleeding.”

Kara hears Cat’s head whip around at the words, and her standing, and she comes around to stare at Kara and yank her head down to look at the blood that trickles from her ears. 

“What the hell happened?”

“There was, well, you’ve heard all the explosions that have gone off across the city.” Cat nods, face drawn. Kara knows it has to be killing her, not being able to do anything, not being able to calm down the people—no one cares, no one is listening, and there is nothing she can do. Kara shrugs. “Carter makes a pretty decent bomb. Good chemistry grades, bud?”

He shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Nice.”

“You were that close to it?”

“I kind of,” Kara mimes a hug, “wrapped myself around it. There wasn’t time for anything else.” Cat is _staring_ at her, and Max has come around from behind the desk to prod at her and she glares at him until he backs up. “I made the only decision that made sense that the time, Cat, and there’s no going back. Carter is fine, he’s not hurt, and none of the kids are, and”

“I was going to say thank you,” Cat says softly, interrupting the tirade, and the hero’s shoulders slump a little.  

“Oh.” She nods. “Okay. He’s alright, that’s what matters right now.”

“And you?” Max asks, and he finally grabs her chin to look into her eyes, shines something at her. Disgust roils in her stomach and she grabs his wrist, pulls his hand away from her.  

“Touch me again, Lord, and I will do as I promised and break your hand.”

“Say no more,” he surrenders, pulling his hand away. He straightens his cuffs and rolls his head on his neck. “Just trying to help. We need our hero in tip top condition for this fight, I think.”

He’s right, but she still doesn’t want his hands on her. 

“I may not have to fight at all,” she says quietly. “Not if we can get the people out from under Non’s control.”

Max shakes his head. “Impossible.”

“It’s not. Carter is fine.” Carter glances up very quickly and then looks down again, ducking his head. Cat squeezes his shoulder gently. “If we can free the people,”

“There is no proof that this,” Max snaps, pointing at Carter, “isn’t a trick. You what? Saw it in his eyes?” he scoffs. “That’s nice. That’s sweet. We can trust that he’s not under mind control because you _saw it in his eyes_.”

“Yes, actually. That’s right.” Kara folds her arms over her chest and lifts her chin. “I trust Carter.”

“I don’t care who you trust, Supergirl. I work with proof. And data. I don’t base all my decisions on gut instincts and you shouldn’t either. It will lead you astray and the rest of us to disaster.”

“Well all I hear right now is you shooting down Supergirl’s ideas, Max. So help us think of a reason why this worked and how we replicate it. Unless you have a better idea?”

Max lays his hand flat on the box—the box that makes Kara uneasy just _looking_ at it crisp and neat and shining there—and he nods. 

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

//

“A bomb,” Kara says when Max is gone. She sinks onto the seat, out on the balcony where Carter can’t hear them. Cat sits with her. “So many people will die, Cat.” She looks out over the city— _her_ city, she has begun tentatively to think, to hope—and wants to cry. “I can’t do it. I won’t.”

“Then don’t. You got through to Carter. I know my son, and I know this isn’t a trick. Carter recognised you—we need to find a way of replicating that. If we can free the city from Non’s control, he will have nothing.”

“Except super strength, super speed, laser eyes, freeze breath, homicidal tendencies, and a huge grudge against me and the people I care for.”

“Yes, well, _those_ you can deal with,” Cat tells her matter of factly and Kara laughs. 

“This is insane.”

“We have to try.”

“I’ll have Max keep the bomb on standby. I won’t lose everyone, not again,” Kara tells her and Cat nods. 

“Fine. But we do this our way first. The right way.”

Kara nods firmly. She clamps her hands tight onto her knees. “Do we just…take Carter with us?”

“I’m not letting him out of my sight. This time,” Cat tells her with a little smile, “I suppose I won’t taunt our enemy. Carter and I will do our best to stay out of the fight.” Kara nods. 

They stare over at him for a few more minutes. 

“I couldn’t do this without you, Cat,” Kara admits quietly. “Your unwavering faith…your guidance…”

“These are things you can tell me _after_ you’ve saved the world, Supergirl,” Cat says, and she tucks a strand of hair behind Kara’s ear. Kara leans into her hand. “And you’re right. I do have faith in you. I know you can save them. You got through to Carter—you got through to me, even as hard as I tried to keep you out,” she says with a huff of a laugh. “I have faith in you, and the world does too. This,” she taps a nail against Kara’s chest, against the crest. “This means something special, but it would mean nothing on someone who doesn’t deserve to wear it. It’s _you_ that they have faith in, not the S.”

Kara feels something surge inside her and she follows her instincts, pushing out of her seat to pull Cat up to her feet. She cups Cat’s chin and murmurs, just _breathes_ the words really, “ _Khap zhao rrip_ ,” before she kisses her. 

It’s a short kiss, and mostly free of the buzzing sensation that starts under her skin when she touches Cat or kisses her. It feels grounding and reassuring and Kara tilts her head and kisses Cat more fully, more firmly, and Cat tugs her closer with two fingers caught in the front of her suit. 

“Come on, Supergirl,” Cat says, pulling away. “Let’s go save the world.”

* * *

On the edge of town, there is a small, somewhat derelict, mostly abandoned broadcasting studio. Inside the small, somewhat derelict, mostly abandoned broadcasting studio are one superhero, one government agent, the CEO of an international media conglomerate, her son, a genius villain who pretends he’s not really a villain, a disguised Martian, and,

“Eliza?”

“Mom?”

“I thought we could use all the scientists we could get our hands on,” Hank rumbles as an explanation. There’s the small matter of the fact that he loves these girls, _his_ girls, he thinks of them more than he maybe should, and they love and need this slender clever woman now, this woman who asks him about enzymes and metabolic reactions and barely hesitated when he shifted his form. 

“Hello, girls.” Eliza Danvers sets down her bag. She props her hands on her hips and looks over her daughters with a careful eye—Alex is too thin, like always, chin and cheeks, elbows and hips too sharp. And she looks tired. Kara’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes and her arms folded across her chest is never a good sign, nor are the very faint hints of blood she can make out on her youngest daughter. 

“Are you okay? How are you not affected?” Alex begins to ask, when Hank catches her eye and drops a slow wink and she sighs. “Okay. Hi.” She hugs her mother instead of asking another question and then it’s Kara’s turn for a hug. 

“Agent Scully,” Cat says, looking up. “Some help? You government types have to be good for something and there’s a small matter of some heavy lifting.”

“Miss Grant.” 

She carries a box that’s annoyingly heavy for its small size for the smaller, blonde woman and when she’s done, Alex touches a finger to her ear piece. It’s disconcerting to know that if it’s taken off she’ll be under the control of Non again and she’s touched it more times than she cares to admit, making sure it’s firmly in place. She hides the gesture, runs a hand through her hair. It’s sweat-soaked and sticking uncomfortably to the back of her neck and she shoots Kara a relieved smile when her sister blows a very gentle, cool breeze in her direction. “Thanks. A bit stuffy in here. It’s small. And old. Not what I expected when you told us about it.”

“Well, I _was_ just starting out,” Cat says, shooting her an unimpressed look, and she sits herself down in front of a panel of dials and switches. 

“What exactly is the plan here?” Eliza asks, coming over to stand with them.

“Well Kara,” Alex begins, and Eliza’s eyes widen and dart over to Cat and Max. 

“Don’t mind me, Dr Danvers. I know all about sweet Kara. I’ve been arrested, locked up, released, manhandled, press ganged into saving her life, sworn into secrecy, and dismissed again.” He looks up from the equipment he’s fiddling with and grins. 

Alex reaches for her gun. 

“We need him. Remember, Alex?” Kara steps between them.

Alex drums her fingers over the grip of her gun, strokes it, and lets her hand drop away. 

“We won’t need him forever,” Cat tells her with a sly smile and Alex nods. 

“That’s true.”

“Charming.”

“Bite me, Lord.”

“I’m afraid I like my women a little more amiable and a little less intelligent.”

“That was almost a compliment.”

“I’ve been known to give them out once in a while. Help me with this?” 

Alex scowls, but she does.

//

“Remember when you told me all we needed was faith and hope?” Kara says, smiles to Cat when she’s prepping in front of the camera. “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind. Not that they’re bad to have, but I was hoping for,”

“Guns,” Alex grunts, fixing Kara’s microphone. “I was hoping for guns.”

Kara nods. 

“Who needs guns when you have dramatic irony?” Cat fiddles with Kara’s curls for a moment more. She’s camera perfect, of course, but Cat needs to do it. Needs to touch her, for just a moment more. “Adds a little something to the story.”

Kara beams at her, eyes crinkling. “Will you write it?”

Cat blinks. 

“My story,” Kara repeats. “Will you write it?”

Cat hears what she isn’t saying— _will you remember me? Will you make sure others remember me? When this ends, I won’t be here to tell it, will you do that for me?_ Or maybe, Cat tells herself, trying for a dash of optimism, that isn’t what she’s trying to say at all. 

Cat smoothes a curl again and pretends that her fingertips skimming over Kara’s cheek is an accident. She manages a smile. 

“Exclusive content on all things Supergirl _is_ my job, Kiera,” she chides, and she clicks her fingers at Alex. “She’s ready. Let’s go.”

//

“People of National City. This is Supergirl and I hope you can hear me.”

* * *

“It’s too early to celebrate a victory, I guess,” Kara says. She’d felt  _so_ good—they had _won_ and everyone was back to normal and she and her family and her symbol had saved the day. And now, now everything was on the edge of ruin again. “Job isn’t over until it’s over, right?” She smiles over at Max—a forced smile, since she still pretty much despises him, but she keeps it in place so no one else can see what sits behind the fear. “Tell me when you find them. I have a cover to maintain.”

She doesn’t. Not really. Not now that Cat knows. 

Max knows this but he nods and Kara kind of hates the understanding in his eyes. He waits until she’s a few paces away before saying, “Finding them is going to be the easy part. Defeating them with only you? That’s our problem.”

Kara turns and shrugs, grins, a big shrug and a big grin that are supposed to be all confidence. “Here I thought you’d learned by now, Max. I can handle anything. I’m _Supergirl_.”

“I’m actually not trying to be an ass for once. I know that you can handle anything—I’m _worried,_ Kara,” he says quietly. For that, she’s grateful. Vasquez is always listening, even when she’s pretending that she’s not, and Kara gets the impression that this isn’t going to be an easy conversation to hear. Not if Max is looking at her with far too much understanding, actual legitimate concern, and not a small amount of fear. She jerks her head to the side and he walks with her, to the round table where they pretend to look at the figures again. “You have no backup, your martian man was injured bringing the good doctor—”

“J’onn is hurt?”

“Concentrate, Supergirl. You _need_ to know what you’re facing so you can be prepared. The DEOs resources are depleted and even if they weren’t, no human can go out there with you,” he tells her, frustrated, “because if they get to close to the source their heads would explode. If you go out there and fight, you might win, yeah.” He braces himself against the edge of the table and Kara closes her eyes. “Chances are, this is a suicide mission.”

“I’ll never stop trying,” she says quietly. “I will stop them.” 

“Good. I really like being alive.”

“Funnily enough, I’m _not_ doing this for you,” she snaps, and he grins, spreads his hands in surrender. Kara seeks out the silhouette of her sister in the far room and she swallows hard. “Max?”

“Yeah?”

“Do me a favour?”

He looks solemn when he nods. “Anything.”

Kara sighs. She droops enough that her hands fall from where they’re crossed over her chest and she has to look away, lips pulling to the side for a moment in sadness, indecision. Finally, she says, “Don’t tell Alex my odds. Okay?”

“If she asks—and she _is_ going to ask because she loves you—what exactly do you want me to do?”

Kara’s eyes turn cold. “Lie. You’re good at that.”

//

Her friends—her best friends, her _good_ friends—gather in James’s office to thank her for saving them and it’s easy to smile at them. She doesn’t have to fake the wide, wide smile at all and she sighs and tugs them into a tight hug. 

“Oh. Can’t breathe, _can’t breathe_ ,” Winn gasps, and James claps her a little forcefully on the shoulder, and they all laugh when Kara lets them go.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m just so,” she shakes her head. _I’m going to miss you. “_ I”m so glad you’re both okay. And I know I don’t say this enough, or ever really and that’s _so_ not fair because you both do so much for me and for everyone but,” she looks over their kind, open faces and the smile she gives them then is smaller but so warm it can’t be described as anything other than golden. For Winn, it’s a smile for her first day, a smile for every day that followed, every moment of kindness, every laugh, every piece of advice, for believing her, for the reveal that could have changed everything but _didn’t_ , at least not into something bad but into something that proved she was right to trust him, right to love him the way she does, the smile is for every instance that he stood up with her and helped her, for the way they came back together after the kiss and the mess that followed, for the way they had settled finally and fully into friendship. For James, it’s a smile for a man who knows her cousin, for someone who can make her laugh, who could make her stomach flutter, a smile for learning and believing, a smile for shared secrets and warmth and kindness.

When she feels the smile begin to falter, she tugs them into the hug again and sighs. “ _Thank you_. Both of you. That’s what I wanted to say.”

“For what?” Winn laughs. “You’re the one who just saved, like, everyone from the, the super mind control ray.”

“Yeah.” James nods. “Seriously. Thank you for that.”

“And for, uh, for the other thing where,”

James pats Winn’s shoulder. “I think he means, thank _you_ for saving us. For catching us.”

Kara nods. Thinks about the flowers she placed on Kelly’s desk. “Of course. I just,” she shakes her head. “I just wanted you both to know that your friendship is one of the best parts of my life and,” she nods, firmly, “I appreciate it. More than you will ever know.”

“Kara,” James says quietly. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, because this is sounding weirdly _really_ important. And heavy.” Winn cuts a look over at James. “Heavy, right?” 

James nods. “Heavy. You saved the day,” he says, and reaches out a hand to Kara’s shoulder, squeezes. “It’s okay.”

“Yeah.” Kara reaches up to her glasses. Gives them both her best smile. “I just,” she shrugs. “I wanted to make sure you both knew.”

“We know.” Winn nods, lifts his arms. Kara laughs and moves in for another hug. “We know, Kara.”

James wraps them both in his arms and there, in her friends’ arms, Kara says silent goodbyes. 

//

She tells Cat the truth. She can’t not tell her—Cat’s eyes meet hers and she nods out to the balcony and she just _looks_ at Kara and the words come out.

“So what are you going to do?” Cat asks her, calm voice at odds with the way her hands grip tight, tight onto the railing. 

Kara makes her way over to lean there with her. She dips her head. “I’m going to fight. I meant what I said. I won’t lose another world.” She touches her hand to Cat’s and, when her hand loosens and comes to grip _tight_ around Kara’s hand, she knows that Cat understands. She tugs Cat to face her. Reaches up with her free hand and skims her fingers over Cat’s cheek. “Tell Carter, tell him…”

“Tell him yourself,” Cat snarls, knowing that Kara is about to make some dumb heroic speech. Kara smiles—Cat curses her in her mind, because that smile is soft and sad and she’s not ready to say goodbye to this golden girl yet. 

“Okay,” Kara agrees. Because that’s what Cat needs from her. “Cat?”

“What?”

“Don’t be mad with me.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Okay.” Kara presses a little closer. Her chest against Cat’s chest, Cat’s hip digging into the soft of Kara’s stomach. She presses her hand a little more firmly against Cat’s cheek and the woman leans into it, just a little. “Cat,” she whispers. “It has been an honour working for you. Getting to be around you every day…”

“Don’t give me this speech, Kara, I don’t want to hear it.” Cat reaches up. Tangles her hands in that cape—tugs until she’s sure that Kara can feel the pressure of it. _Come back,_ she wants to demand. Wants to tell her _you’ve changed me_ , wants to say something lighter, perhaps, remind her of the meeting they have tomorrow. Kara’s nose skims up her cheek and all Cat says is, “Please.”

The pain in her head is getting to be unbearable. She knows Kara has to leave. 

“This is what I was sent here to do,” Kara tells her very gently. Then, “Tell Carter I love him,” she says, because she must. Because she actually might not get a chance to say it and Carter deserves for someone to tell him. Because she wants to say it and dammit she thinks she deserves to—she wants to. 

Cat closes her eyes, shake her head a little. “Kara,” she murmurs. Then, “I will.” 

When she opens her eyes again some minutes later, Kara is gone. 

//

“Hey buddy.” 

She finds him. Of course she does. She has x-ray vision and can hear for miles and she wants to find him.

He has his hands pressed to his ears and she hates the pain that washes over his face. 

“I love you, Carter.” He leans against her and she does what she’s seen Cat do a hundred times when he comes to the office, sweeps his hair off his forehead and kisses the top of his head. She takes a moment to memorise the feeling of his small, boney little shoulders digging into her and the weight of him and the colour of his eyes.

And, when he says, “What are you going to do?” she memorises his voice and lets herself dream for a moment about how it might change, how deep it might get, what he might look like when he’s all grown up. 

“I’m going to stop them,” she tells him quietly, and he nods. “Look after your mom for me. And let your mom look after you. She loves you.” He nods again. “And if Katherine keeps being insufferable, tell her to stuff it.”

Carter swallows. “What if I don’t want you to leave?” His fingers curl hesitantly in her sleeve and she thinks of the message she got only minutes ago and he must read her answer in her face because he lets her go and pulls his hands into his lap. “I… I love you too, you know,” he says stiffly, and he glances at her face a few times but always his gaze is pulled back down to his hands. “Kara?”

“Yeah?”

“Since you’re Supergirl _and_ Kara, can I interview your sister for my essay?”

Kara beams at him and pulls him into a hug. “Carter, yes, absolutely you should do that. She’s like, totally the _coolest_ person, and I know she’d be really happy to do that for you.” Her face scrunches up a little. “She might be a bit vague with her job description, since the organisation she works for doesn’t really exist, but she’s my hero and she’s smart and amazing and the best person in the world and you really should interview her.”

Carter nods. “Okay.”

Her phone buzzes again. 

“I have to go.”

“Yeah.”

“Want to walk me to the balcony?” she suggests, and Carter doesn’t look at her when he swipes at his eyes with the sleeves of his cardigan. 

Cat curls her hands over his shoulders and tugs him back into her when they stand on the balcony together. If her fingers dig into his shoulders when Kara disappears from sight, well, he just leans back a little harder into her and neither of them talk about it. 

//

“Carter Grant called me to be your, and I _quote_ ,” Hank grumbles, looking down at his phone, “sidekick so you don’t get hurt.” He folds his arms. “Want to tell me how he got my personal cell number?”

Kara smiles. “I don’t know. He’s good at that stuff. He probably cloned my phone.”

“He also wants an interview with one of my agents. An Agent Danvers. When this is all over.”

“Huh.”

His face smoothes a little and he smiles. “He’s a good kid.”

“I know. The best.”

“He’s worried about you.”

Kara swallows. “I know. I didn’t want to worry him but,” she closes her eyes. “I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”

“Kara,”

“No, J’onn. We both know what I’m up against. And I _will_ save the earth,” she promises, and he nods back to her. There is no other option left to them. “I just don’t know if I’ll make it out alive. I didn’t, I didn’t get to say the things that needed to be said when I left Krypton and I wanted to be sure that I said them now. Just in case.”

“You can’t give up, Kara.”

“I’m _not_ ,” she says, and the smile she gives him is a little sad, a little hopeful, and ultimately peaceful. “This is right. This is what I was meant to do. My mother didn’t send me two thousand light years to fall in love, to have children, to have that kind of a life. She sent me here to protect Kal El and now, now I’m going to use my powers to protect the earth and _all_ the people who live on it and if I die achieving that, I’m at peace with that.”

His frown isn’t disapproval, just deepened with another loss he thought he wouldn’t have to face just yet and she grips his arms, presses a kiss to his forehead. 

“I’m coming with you,” he says, grabbing her before she can move away. “Don’t tell me not to. This is my world too.”

Kara nods. “Let’s go.”

“You’re not going to say goodbye to Alex?”

Kara finds her easily—she hasn’t really let herself lose track of where her sister is, through all of this. She stares at her sister, standing easily amongst her agents, listens to the firm words, the familiar cadence of her voice. 

“No,” she says softly. “I don’t think I’ll be able to leave if I start.”

“Alright.” Hank stands. “Let’s go then, Supergirl. We’ve got a world to save.”

* * *

“Supergirl,” Alex greets, though every move, every sound, makes the pain in her head sharper until it feels like her eyes are about to burst. “I’m _so_ angry with you,” she says, and she knows that Kara smiles at that. “What’s going on?” 

“We defeated Non and Indigo. J’onn ripped Indigo in half.”

“And Non?”

“I burned his eyes out of his head,” Kara growls and Alex laughs and then groans and then laughs again. 

“Good girl.”

“That’s not why I called, Alex.” Kara’s sigh crackles through the headset. “We can’t stop Myriad and we can’t power the ship. I’m going to fly Fort Rozz into space myself.”

“No—Kara, _no_ , that’s not an option. There’ll be no atmosphere, no gravity. You won’t be able to get back.”

There’s an awful, long moment of silence and then Kara sighs. “I didn’t call for you to talk me out of it, Alex. I just called to say goodbye.”

“Kara, _no_.”

“I was sent to protect Earth and that is what I’m going to do,” she says, and Alex thinks of the way Kara’s eyes had firmed and her hands pressed flat against her knees and she had looked at Alex’s cast around her broken arm—Kara, so small and _young_ —and she had taken the glasses out of Jeremiah’s hands and never taken them off, not for years, not even in the shower. She thinks of the way she had stood for hours, very still and silent, in the corner of the room when they found out about Jeremiah’s death. She thinks of Kara walking slowly to and from school everything single day. She thinks about careful hands and determined eyes learning how to handle a pencil, how to use a computer, about the journals full of every conversation her ears picked up and how the letters slowly started to look more like an alphabet. She thinks about little hands curled in a lap when disaster after disaster showed on their television and about eyes that had told an entire story, about a new family that was the only world she knew anymore and how she would do anything to protect it. 

She thinks about the night of the plane crash, of Kara clinging to the wing of the plane and _looking_ at her and she bites back a sob. 

“Alex, will you promise me something? Promise me that when you find Jeremiah, you tell him that I never stopped wearing his glasses. He needs to know that you and Eliza gave me a great life, one I never thought I’d be able to find outside of Krypton. He needs to know that everything good I did,” Kara swallows and Alex tries not to cry but this is her baby sister, and the pain is building behind her eyes. “Everything good I did came from you being my sister.”

“Kara, you taught me—“

“And I need you to promise me that you will have a good life, Alex, and you will be happy and find more people to love and you will do all the things you’ve wanted to do but couldn’t because you had me as a sister, to protect, to hide, to look after.”

“Kara,”

“Promise me.”

“I can’t,” she cries, and her head _throbs_. 

“Alex, promise me, there isn’t much time.”

“You would use the end of the human race to win an argument with me,” Alex says. And all she really wants to tell Kara is that she owes her mother nothing, she owes her cousin nothing, she owes this world nothing. All she wants to say is, stay. 

Be my sister.

Be alive.

But this is _Kara_ , and she is going to save the world.

So Alex chokes back her words and she says, “I promise.”

The line crackles for a moment and then Kara, sounding very young and very determined, says, “I have to go now.”

“List—I love you, Kara.”

“I love you.”

* * *

All her muscles strain to lift the structure. A  million tonnes—that’s what General Lane had said. And where the weight of the condensed award star had been warm and almost encouraged her to lift it, Fort Rozz fought her every inch of the way. Ungainly and—if it were possible and Kara doesn’t know if it is but it is alien tech so perhaps it is—purposefully malignant, the weight of it bears down on her. Kara can feel her heart lodged high in her throat. All around her is that hum and the groan of metal and air, rushing past her, and she wants to push faster because everyone she loves will die if she can’t. But the prison is barely holding together as it is and she’s afraid if any pieces fall, they’ll continue the sound wave attack. Or the impact will cause a massive earthquake. That’s what happened in the Avengers and Kara is not ready for that.

 Her arms her shaking—one hand slips, slick with sweat, and she hears her fingers tear a chunk out of the hull of the prison and she scrabbles to hold it all together.

Just a little further. 

She can feel the air thinning around her—the thinner the atmosphere, the harder it gets to push which is bad but, on the other hand, she knows she’s getting closer.

She doesn’t know whether she’ll get there in time. Four minutes may have already passed—she wouldn’t be surprised, each second holding Fort Rozz feels like an eternity, but she hopes it’s not all over yet, hopes that they’re okay. 

Kara strains her ears in vain. She’s far too high to hear anyone. But she can’t help trying. 

“Rao,” she mutters when the air is in scraps around her. “Please let them be okay.”

The pressure of the atmosphere crackles around her and then…it’s gone. 

She can’t feel the weight of the prison anymore. Fort Rozz, a million tonnes of alien metal, just floats out of her hands. Weightless in space. 

She can’t make herself move so she’s glad when one of the arms of the prison strikes her and sends her whirling, turning her. For a short while, she is stuck looking down at the earth. It’s beautiful, Kara thinks as she drifts. She decides that of all the ways there exists to die, saving the people she loves and the world she has come to see as home…it is not a bad way. 

Kara lets her arms fan out by her sides and she closes her eyes. It’s cold. She can feel it, nipping at her.

She spins slowly in place and smiles, eyes fluttering when the heat of the sun touches her face.“Rao,” she whispers, or maybe she just thinks it—her body prickles, she doesn’t know whether it’s too much pressure or whether there isn’t enough and her body is trying to unravel all at once. “Keep them safe.”

 


	14. Chapter 14

The sun lamps are at full power and Alex hopes that will be enough.

Kara looks small and pale and fragile, though she is anything but, laying on that large table with the lamps shutting her in. There is a stinging scrape down one side of her—her right thigh and knee, from her wrist to her elbow, and across her chin—and though it had been red and then more red, inflamed, it has scabbed over brown and, here and there where the damage wasn’t that bad, a healthy pink. 

Alex swallows roughly. She knows what it means that Kara hasn’t healed instantly—it’s _good_ that she’s not broken into pieces, the last of her powers must’ve been used up when she’d landed and Alex thanks every god she knows the name of that she had enough to survive, but she hasn’t woken up and it’s been days and she’s scared. 

She hurts too—her head _still_ hurts, she can still hear the ringing in her ears though it has long since stopped—and she lowers her head down onto the table,slips her hand into Kara’s. 

“C’mon, Kara,” she whispers, and shifts, moves her forehead to rest on Kara’s wrist instead and she pretends the thumping in her head is Kara’s strong, steady pulse. 

//

Alex has lived for days in something at feels like half dream, half nightmare, so when she hears her name she’s ashamed to say she doesn’t respond immediately.

“-lex,” a voice croaks. 

The fingers in hers—twitch. Other fingers brush at the hair fallen across her face. “Alex. Your thick skull, s’giving me pins ’n’ needles,” that sweet, sweet, totally cracked voice says, and Alex peels open heavy eyelids and, with a clumsy hand, pushes away one of the lamps so she can lean up, away, and check. Make sure. She can’t _take it_ if it’s just a dream again but god, god there she is, her little sister, looking up at her with tears streaked down her temples into her hairline and Alex pushes up onto her feet and bends over her to press a kiss, achingly soft, to her forehead. 

“Don’t you ever do something like that again, do you hear me?” she whispers, helping Kara to sit up a little so they can hug. Kara feels weak and slow and soft but her arms wrap around Alex and hold her loosely. She doesn’t reply—both of them know that something like this might well happen again. “Mom would kill me.” 

Kara laughs—coughs, swallows, continues to laugh. “How bad?”

“She’s been _cleaning_ ,” Alex tells her and she rolls her eyes. She lifts a hand and wipes at Kara’s cheek, brushing away a tear. “Kara,” she says, voice approaching _awe_ and it’s enough to make Kara’s fragile smile crack. Her laugh turns into a sniff and she grips the back of Alex’s shirt as tight as she can, weak utterly human fingers barely managing to grip. She cries hot tears into her shoulder as Alex strokes up and down her back, murmuring soothing nothings. 

“Hey hey hey, it’s alright, it’s okay Kara. Everyone’s safe, you’re alright, you’re safe.” Kara grips more tightly. “You did it,” she murmurs, turning a little to cradle the back of Kara’s head and her other arm stops stroking to just _hold_ her tight and Kara sobs once. “You did so great, Kara, it’s okay, everything is okay.”

“E-everyone? They’re all safe?” Kara asks when she can stop the tears. “Winn? And James? Lucy—and mom?” She swallows. “Cat and Carter?”

“They’re all okay,” Alex nods. 

“And J’onn?” Kara remembers, and she tries to swing her legs off the edge of the table. It’s strange for both of them when Alex can hold her in place with a hand on her thigh and seemingly zero effort. 

“He’s fine too. But you need to rest.”

Kara sags, lets herself be pushed down onto the table. She traces a wondering hand over the scrape on her chin, winces a little but doesn’t stop. It’s lumpy and sore and so, so strange for her. A girl who never once scraped her knee on the playground. 

“I carried it into space,” Kara remembers and she grins, wide and sleepy. “That’s pretty cool, huh?”

“It was very cool,” Alex agrees, though she has other words she would pick first, and she strokes Kara’s hair until she falls asleep again. 

“How’s the patient?” a familiar voice interrupts her some time later. 

Alex doesn’t look away from her sleeping sister. “She woke up,” she tells him. “She’s awfully proud of herself. Remembers that she carried it into space. She said she’s _cool_.” Alex laughs and shakes her head. 

“She is cool.”

“I’ll tell her you said that,” Alex teases, and when he comes to stand next to her, she finally manages to look away from Kara. “How are you?” she asks, and he side eyes her stoically. “I know Indigo had to be a hard fight, J’onn.

“I’ll be fine, Alex. You just worry about your sister.”

“I can worry about more than one person at a time, J’onn. Has anyone looked at you?”

“Your mother, actually. Which is why I’m here.” He lifts his shoulders and frowns heavily. “She won’t stop asking me about my enzymes.”

Alex grins. “Like mother like daughter.”

“Yes. Well at least you have to respect me as your boss.” He unfolds his arms and pats her shoulder. “I’m very glad that Kara is alright. Call me if you need anything.” She doesn’t look convinced that he’s alright—she looks like she’s trying to divide whether she would stay with Kara or go after him if he left, so he makes the choice for her. “On second thought, do you mind?” He points to the free chair next to her and Alex shakes her head no. He settles into it, puts his feet out in front of him. “You look like crap, Agent Danvers. Try to get some shut eye. I’ll look after Kara.”

“You’ve been watching those old cop shows again,” Alex accuses him, but the promise makes it easier to slip into sleep. 

//

The second time Kara wakes, Alex is still by her side but she has showered and changed—Kara guesses that she has, at least, but it’s hard to tell since all of Alex’s tactical agent gear looks the same. She looks clean, though. 

She’s reading through a folder an inch thick—judging from the size of it, Kara thinks it’s probably her medical file—and she smiles warmly when Kara sits up. 

That she doesn’t move to stop her at all is a good sign.

“What the prognosis, doc? Am I gonna live?” Kara asks. She gets a glare in return that tells her that’s not a good joke and Alex flips the folder shut and slaps it down on the counter. 

“It says here that you’re an idiot hero.”

Kara lifts one shoulder, grins a goofy little grin. “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“Idiot is underlined seven times.”

“Wow. Okay, _harsh_.”

Alex grins and pushes away from the work bench, steps over to Kara’s side and lays a hand on Kara’s knee. She rubs with her thumb and Kara feels the last of the tension in her body seep away. She’s safe. She's with her sister. She’s _safe_ and _alive_.

“How are you feeling?” she asks, teasing tone replaced by one that wars between a doctors clinical distance and a sisters desperation. 

“Tired,” Kara tells her, with some surprise. She lifts a hand and blinks down at it, surprised when it _hurts_. “I’m—is that a bruise?”

“Yes.”

“I’m bruised. And…scabbing.”

“You’re a bit scraped. I’m sorry for that,” Alex says and she ducks her head a little, looks away. 

“ _Don’t be._ ” Kara grabs at her sister’s hand. “Alex, I feel good. I feel _great_ for someone who is supposed to be stuck in space. Hey, I didn’t get another Black Mercy stuck on me, did I? This isn’t a dream?”

Alex glares. “That isn’t _funny_.”

Kara grins. “It’s a little funny.”

“No, it’s not.” 

“Well,” Kara says slowly, throwing her a look that tells Alex that _yes_ it _is_ kind of funny but she’ll let it go, “I’m alive. I’m—how am I alive?” she asks, confused. 

“I—” Alex’s eyes flick over to the door. “I flew your pod up and I,” she lifts her hands, trying to demonstrate, and Kara gapes at her. 

“You just nudged me back into the atmosphere?”

“Yes?”

Kara gapes at her for a little longer and then, in a move that surprises both of them, she throws her head back and laughs. “You,” she wheezes, “you nudged me back into the atmosphere. You took my pod—my pod you’re so tall it’s so _tiny_ Alex!”

“Yeah, my neck still hurts,” Alex says, and Kara is set off again. 

She lays back down so she can laugh harder, it seems, and the laughs are occasionally interrupted by a groan and Kara grabs her side and keeps laughing. 

“I’m alive,” she sighs finally, and her hand flops out to grab Alex’s. “You saved me.”

“I had to. You’re my sister.” Alex gives her hand a squeeze. “How do you feel?” she asks abruptly. “Good enough to stand?”

“Um. I think so?”

“Alright.” Alex slaps her knee and jerks her head toward the door. “Come on.” She keeps up her brusque tone but her hands, when she helps Kara off the table and toward the exit, are gentle and never too far from her. “Quick change, Supergirl,” Alex says when she leads her to her suit—that, more than anything else, tells Kara how long she’s been asleep for. The suit looks pristine and is folded very carefully on a chair, shining red boots tucked underneath the chair. 

“Uh.” Kara tests herself. “Yeah, Alex, you’re gonna have to help me into this,” she laughs, and tries to hide the way her hands are shaking. “No superspeed.”

Alex rolls her eyes. 

“You _know_ a guy made this suit."

"Uh, yeah, Winn made it."

"Listen, I'm making a comment on the male gaze, okay. I'm _saying_ that I doubt a woman would have designed this.”

“I like it.”

“It’s so tight. And colourful.”

“Of course it is. It’s basically supposed to be a costume.”

“Exactly! I could have got you a tactical uniform with an iron on crest.”

“Alex!” 

“What? It’s not like I could’ve got Hank to approve the budget for a specially designed uniform for you.”

“He’s not that much of a scrooge, is he?”

“Well, technically Vasquez overlooks the budget—“

“She's a scrooge. Once, I asked her if I could borrow a paperclip and I swear she wanted me to fill out a request form in triplicate." Alex snorts. "I would’ve looked just like you. But with a cape. Do you think I would’ve had the same boots? I think they’re cool.”

“Yep. Also, I’m pretty sure she heard that,” Alex stage whispers, watching Kara’s eyes widen and she stops trying to tug her tights up her legs. “She has this whole place mic-ed.”

“Really? Vasquez, can you look into getting me some of those boots? Please and thank you,” Kara laughs and jumps a few times until her tights are on. “This is so much easier when I have superpowers, I’m already tired.” 

Eventually, she’s dressed and she adjusts her cape in the mirrored reflection of a cabinet. “Do I have to give a press conference or something?”

“Or something.”

Alex leads the way, Kara trailing behind a little.

“Alex, what’s going on?” The DEO headquarters are oddly quiet and she rushes to stop Alex, hand on her arm. “Where is everyone?” she asks, voice low and concerned. She strains her ears but this wing had been sound proofed long ago. Oh—and her powers still haven’t returned, she remembers, clenching her fists. “Are they okay? Were they hurt when, did I do it in time?”

“They’re okay,” Alex assures her. “Trust me.”

Kara’s jaw clenches and she stares at Alex for a moment, eyes worried, but then she nods and lets herself relax. “Okay.”

Alex steps out the door of the medical wing and into the headquarters proper. Kara relaxes further when she sees people moving around outside. The knowledge that they are safe lightens her until, powers or no, her feet barely skim the ground as she walks. 

At the last door before they reach the central control room, Alex stops. “After you,” she says, and waves Kara ahead of her. 

“What’s going on?” 

Alex rolls her eyes and Kara rolls hers right back and steps through the doorway. 

The first person to see her is a doctor. He stops still and raises a hand to his forehead—a salute, Kara realises. She stops. The sudden movement grabs the attention of a few more—agents, this time—and their boots stamp down onto the tiled floor and their salutes are more precise, snapping into place. Kara’s eyes widen. The sound garners enough attention that all the rest—more people than Kara can remember seeing gathered in the control room before—turn to her and, silently and proudly, they salute her. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Alex step into the room behind her and move to the side. Kara turns and sees her sister press her heels down into the ground and salute.

Kara looks around at her people, her friends and the men and women and agents she has worked alongside for all these long months, her _sister_ saluting her silently—Lucy, there, a small squad of General Lane’s men, and Hank at the front—and she swallows hard before she nods, just once. 

“Supergirl,” Hank greets her, and in a whisper of action everyone drops their hands and relaxes to rest. “Outside these walls, you won’t get recognition. Acknowledgement for your sacrifice. Far too few people know what you did for us.” Kara nods again. “But we know. We know that you have done a great service at great _personal_ sacrifice and,” Hank hesitates for a moment, clears his throat, and Kara sees the pain of grief and the relief in the way he swallows and nods, hand resting on his holster. “We are grateful to you. Very grateful. Thank you.” He steps forward and holds his hand out and Kara clasps it in both of her own. 

She shakes more hands, sees more faces blur in front of her, as they make their way back to the control panel—Vasquez gives her a nod, a small smile and a “ma’am, I’ll see about those boots”—and they stand there together as everyone disperses. 

“Are you alright?” Lucy asks, seeing Kara hold onto the rail. 

“I am,” she assures her. “Just tired.”

“I’ll bet.” Lucy tilts her head. “Want me to take you home?”

Kara cranes her neck to look for Alex—she’s been snagged by a few doctors and they’re discussing quietly in the hallway, she looks excited and focused but every few moments she looks up to find Kara and when she sees her with Lucy, she nods and gives them a little wave. 

“Yeah,” she pats Lucy’s shoulder, yawns. “That would be great, thank you.”

“No worries.”

“Plus, you want to interrogate me while I’m tired, don’t you?”

Lucy grins. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Kara laughs, catches the meaningful glance she exchanges with Hank, and groans. “Oh come on, you’re on _babysitting_ duty?”

“Yep.” Lucy takes her hand. “Come on, baby,” she says and winks and when Kara, defences down and surprised, flushes and stutters she laughs. “So,” Lucy begins when Kara’s flush has died down, “did you and James kiss?”

Lucy laughs when Kara stumbles. 

* * *

“Do you think I’ll get my powers back?”

“I _think_ you fell out of space and you’re lucky to be alive at all,” Eliza tells her, and she tucks her blanket tight around her until Kara is afraid she won’t be able to breathe.

When Eliza goes to the kitchen, Alex takes pity on her sister and leans over to untuck her a little. 

“I’m in more danger now than I was fighting my own uncle,” Kara grumbles and Alex smacks the back of her head and joins her mother in the kitchen, filling up her water bottle. “Hey!”

“You deserved that.”

“Oh what did she say now?”

“That she’s in more danger now—”

“You tattle!”

“—than when she was fighting her own uncle.”

“Kara!” Eliza turns to her, hands on hips. “You sit there and you take this, young lady. We were lucky enough to get you back from _space_ so you better believe we’re going to make sure you survive humanity. Understood?”

“Yes, Eliza,” Kara mutters, and plucks at her blanket.

“Good.”

Kara waits for exactly three minutes before she sucks in a breath and asks again, voice small, “But do you think I’ll get my powers back?” Eliza presses a plate against the counter, stares down at it until Kara thinks maybe she’ll break it with force of will alone, and then she picks up her coat and bag and steps out of the apartment. Kara stares after her and sighs, rubs her forehead. 

She _hates_ headaches. She’ll be nicer to Alex next time she has a hangover, she promises.

“Move your feet,” Alex grunts, and drops down onto the couch. She pulls Kara’s feet back onto her lap. “Mom isn’t angry with you.”

“She _looks_ angry.”

“She’s not,” Alex says again, waving her hand. “She’s just…She doesn’t want to lose you.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. Because it’s hard to see you fling yourself up into the sky when you think you’re invincible and we’re scared for you all the time seeing you fight these, these _super_ villains.”

“You think I’m not scared?” Kara twists, trying to find a more comfortable position. “Alex, you fight the same people I do and you don’t have bulletproof skin or, or super strength.”

“Okay.” Alex nods. “Okay. But the difference is that you could’ve died, Kara. You _really_ could have died this time and yeah, she’s being overbearing right now but just,” she squeezes Kara’s ankle and rubs up her shin. Kara sighs. “Just let her, okay? There isn’t anything she can do, you’re a hero. So let her over-feed you and tuck you into bed and let her pretend that she can protect you.”

“Okay.”

Kara knows that she’s right—Eliza worries the most obviously, in that brisk purposeful way of hers. Laundry and a stocked pantry happened in a whirlwind, and she treats Kara’s scrapes with a cream that _stings_ every time. Kara thinks she made it herself and made it sting on purpose. Eliza doesn’t admit to it, but after a few days she brings around a different balm that doesn’t sting at all. 

Winn worries too. He’s been by a few times and since crash landing 2.0, as Alex and Kal-El dubbed it, Winn has kept a list of injuries she’s managed to accrue so he can pull it up on his phone whenever she even _looks_ like she’s going to suggest they go for a walk outside. Or down to the bakery. 

James always looks _sad_ and Kara doesn’t invite him around more than twice. He hangs out with Kal-El when he’s there and that’s a relief—Kara doesn’t want to think about what is most important to him, _Kara_ or the Kara who can be a hero and she knows that he _says_ she’s both, says that both are important, but she’s not sure where he’ll stand if she’s _just_ Kara Danvers. 

Kal is nervous. He’s sure she’ll splinter in his arms so he never touches her. He’s happy to see her though—they never visit one another enough and he’s been with her for almost a week now. Powerless, weak, it doesn’t matter. She gets to sit and talk with her cousin and feel his warmth and see his smile, so like her uncle, and his size so much like her own father, and sometimes when he feels brave enough, he curls an arm around her shoulders and tugs her into a hug and he smells human but that ozone sharp edge to him that she’s never smelt on anyone else. 

Alex is her favourite. She treats her just like normal and it’s only with her that she’s been able to fully relax. Stop acting. Actually tell her when she needs a pill. She brings Kara out of her thoughts with another instruction and a squeeze. 

“And hey, try not to break your toe on the end of the bed again.”

“I _won’t_ ,” Kara promises, fervent. “That hurt so much! That hurt _more_ than that time I broke my arm.” 

Alex rubs her shin again and nods wisely. “I know. And if you keep hurting yourself, I’m going to throw Lego on the ground and you can see how painful it is to step on one of those.” Kara scrunches her nose—it doesn’t _sound_ that painful, but Alex is grinning like it is and she nods quickly.

“Okay, I won’t, I promise.”

“Good. Now, I’m taking the leftovers home for me and Eliza.”

“You’re taking Eliza with you?”

“I think you can be trusted for one night.”

Kara squints at her. “You’re leaving an agent at the door, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

“And what do you mean you’re taking the leftovers? I’m _weak_ , Alex. I can’t go outside like this—you have to leave them for me.”

Alex glares at her. “No. Because you’ll think you still have your never-ending alien stomach and you’ll eat all of this before midnight and then, Kara, then you’ll get a stomach ache and panic and call me and I’ll kill you for interrupting the first full night of sleep I’ve had in months.”

“Huh.” Kara eyes her nervously and Alex lifts her eyebrows in a distinct challenge. “I… Do you want to take the leftovers when you leave, Alex?”

“Why yes, Kara. Yes I do. That would be so nice.”

//

“Kal-ex had no more information,” Clark tells her, disappointed and apologetic.

“It’s okay.”

“I can throw Jimmy off a building for you, if you want, get your adrenaline pumping,” he offers, and James rolls his eyes but laughs. Kara slaps her cousins arm. 

“No!”

“Alright, alright.” Clark rubs at his arm as though it hurt, and then settles next to her, hugs her to his side and starts off on a dramatic retelling of someone he had fought with James years before she’d landed. She’s read all the stories she could get her hands on—the Danvers were happy to help her, though her fascination with her cousin and his powers worried them—but she’s always happy to hear him tell it. 

“I flew through _seven_ walls,” he says, and Kara laughs, and James throws some popcorn at him. 

“Speak English for us humans!”

“Learn Kryptonian,” Clark shoots back.

“Pfft, you can’t talk,” Kara tells her cousin. “Your pronunciation needs work.”

“Excuse me,” Clark presses a hand to his chest. “How dare you?”

James laughs—he can’t understand them, mostly guessing their conversation from their expressions. He knows a few words here and there where they slip in and out of their languages, and then suddenly he understands more words because they’re in a language battle that Kara is destined to win but Clark keeps up admirably as they work through Spanish and Portuguese, French and he stumbles in German but regains footing in Hebrew and Arabic. When Kara narrows her eyes and starts flitting through Farsi, Polish, what sounds like several Indian dialects and then, possibly, into Thai. Clark raises his hands. 

“You’ve got me beat.”

“Twenty five years in a pod will do that for you,” she concedes in a show of good sportsmanship, but only after she crows and holds her hands triumphantly over her head. 

“I thought you were asleep for that?” Winn asks, looking away from the screen. “Also, you _need_ to get a new Halo. This one is, like, really old.”

“No one plays that except for you, Winn. And I was asleep for most of it?” Kara shrugs. “I must’ve absorbed it. Osmosis.”

“ _That’s not how that works_!” Alex calls out from the kitchen. 

Winn and James leave eventually—Kara and Clark aren’t trying to ignore them but they’re immersed in their own conversation, mostly Kryptonian, a little English, and Alex rolls her eyes every time she hears Clark’s raised voice and Kara laughing because it’s always the same thing—“Stop making _fun_ of me, Kara, I’m trying! Your English was _terrible_ when you first got here!—but it’s nice, really nice, to have a home full of laughter. The worry has dissipated, mostly. There is only the faintest undercurrent left, and that’s just worry about Kara. Which they all always did, anyway. 

When Clark finally gets an alert from Lois that he can’t ignore, he’s reluctant to go but Kara holds up her cape and points to the window and he kisses her forehead and uses the fire escape. 

“The big guy coming back soon?”

“Mhm.” Kara curls her feet under her duvet. “He promised to wash up after dinner.”

“Oh good. I don’t have to do it then, I can just do this instead,” Alex says, and she considers that plenty of warning before she flops down on top of Kara, who struggles and squirms and then gives up. Laughs. 

“You’re such an ass.”

“Maybe. But you love me.” Alex rolls to the side and they lay there, quiet. “What you did, Kara—”

“Alex.”

“Just, let me say it.” Kara frowns up at the ceiling but, after a moment, she nods. She entwines her fingers with Alex’s. “What you did… It was the bravest, most selfless thing I’ve ever seen,” she tells her. “And I hate you for it,” she says, fighting the way her voice wants to crack. “I was so scared, Kara. And I know that it’s my job and your job and there was no other way but I,” Alex squeezes her eyes shut tight and turns, presses her face into Kara’s shoulder. “Dammit, Kara, you’re my little sister. I couldn’t protect you.”

“Y’know,” Kara says, trying to swallow around the lump in her throat, “it’s okay to let me do the protecting, sometimes. I’m not _that_ little.”

Alex laughs louder than the comment warranted and, when her laughter fades, they’re still just laying there together. She sighs. “I just wanted to tell you. I was scared.”

“Me too.”

Kara twists on the couch and there isn’t enough space, really. They’re all knocking knees and Kara is surprisingly heavy for her size and when her elbow slips and falls into Alex’s stomach, she wheezes for a good minute. 

“Sorry.”

“I’m telling mom.”

“It was an _accident_.”

“Murder isn’t an accident, Kara,”

“Oh don’t be such a _baby_.”

When they settle again, Kara gnaws on her lip for a moment before inching close, pulling her sister into a hug. Alex tugs her close, wraps both arms around her. Kara twists her hands into her shirt and sighs happily. Her head tucks beneath Alex’s chin and they lay there on the too short couch and, for a moment, it feels like they’re the whole world that exists. Alex lets herself dream that Kara will be safe and whole and happy forever because in this world, in _her_ world, there is no hate. There is just the two of them, two girls with bodies they’ve made into weapons to protect the other, with hands that have been taught to be gentle so that when the battle ends they can hold one another. Two girls, two _sisters._

In her world, there is no room for any hurt. Just contentment, just a soft, wondering kind of joy that she can hold her sister close, that she’s _alive_ and _breathing_. Just this love that sits inside her ribcage, warm and full and sometimes it _burns_ and sometimes it _aches_ but it’s human, Alex thinks,sifting her fingers through her sister’s hair, to love so much it hurts. 

If that’s the only requirement then Kara is the most human of them all, and the thought pulls Alex’s lips up into a smile and she huffs a laugh against the top of Kara’s head. 

Kara pulls away a little. 

“What is it?”

“Nah. Nothing.”

She looks at Alex curiously but she nods. “Okay.”

Alex leans her cheek against Kara’s crown. “Kara?” Her sister hums against her collar. “Were you really scared?”

“Yeah.” Kara’s fingers twist further in Alex’s shirt and she’s about to complain—don’t rip this one, be careful—when she remembers that Kara is small and human. For now. When Kara pulls away, Alex watches for her tells and she isn’t sure whether it’s because Kara feels safe or because she’s letting her see or _what_ , but Alex can see it all—all the pain, the fear, the determination, the flash fire hope that sparks and sputters out as quick as it came—and she waits for Kara to explain. “It was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. But I’d do it again, Alex.”

“I know,” Alex confirms, and she can’t stop the way her jaw clenches or the way she hugs maybe a little too hard, but she can control what she says. So she adds, “I really am proud of you."

Kara’s mouth twists. Her eyes brighten with tears. “Even,” she whispers, “if I was kind of relieved?”

Alex waits. 

“I just,” she looks away. “Astra and, and my mom and dad. Krypton.” Kara shrugs. “I thought maybe I would see them again. That I could be with them and, and I wouldn’t be a hero anymore. It’s not that I don’t love it here or love being Supergirl, I _do_ ,” Kara is cut off when Alex tugs her back into her tight hug and her laugh sounds close to a sob. “I need to breath, Alex.”

“Not immediately. You’ll be fine without two minutes of oxygen. Trust me, I’m a doctor.”

“Okay,” Kara sighs and she waits it out, hugging Alex back. “I didn’t want to die,” she clarifies when Alex lets go. “I just thought, if I was going to die, it wasn’t so bad. Part of me, part of me knew that you were alive. Safe. And I didn’t think there was a way back so part of me wasn’t scared at all. There was only one path left to me then and knowing my family was waiting for me, to welcome me into Rao’s light, it was easy to go forward,” she meets Alex’s eyes and sometimes it hits her how strange her sister is. Not the flying, not the superpowers, not the fact that she’s an alien—all that Alex can, in some scientific way, understand. 

Kara is young. She is bursting with energy and excitement and _joy._ Always. And for so long, Alex has thought that she has to protect Kara, that Kara doesn’t understand the world. But it’s times like this that makes her reconsider—Kara is more than her happy little sister, more than muscles and a cape, she is a girl who was sent halfway across the galaxy alone and scared and she has balanced her fear out with joy and her loneliness with love and Alex has known all of this, of course she has, she’s Kara’s _sister_ and she’s not blind to her strengths. But there is a difference between knowing and _knowing_ and it takes Kara looking at her and waiting for her to—to what? Renounce her? Cry? Tell her that its wrong and bad and sad to have been ready to die? Alex isn’t sure—it takes times like these for Alex to realise that her sister is more than what she will ever understand. That there is weight to Kara, and depths, that she will never understand. 

But, she thinks, all the weight has shaped her into who she is, and all the depths can be equally measured in the heights of the love Alex has for her.

“One day,” Alex says, and she takes Kara’s hand in hers and makes sure that she is looking at her, “it really will be the end. And when that day comes, Rao is going to welcome you and all your family is going to be there. Everyone you have ever loved will wait for you and it will be warm, and golden, and you will never ever know darkness or loneliness again,” she says, pulling up words she remembers from when Kara was young, from when Kara had told her a little of what Rao’s love meant. She means it too—it’s everything Kara has ever wanted for her end and if Alex has to fight a god to make it happen, well. She’s fought other weird shit so how hard could it be?

“Thank you,” Kara whispers and she nods into Alex’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” Alex pulls back to frown at her. “But. Not _too_ soon, okay?” Kara laughs and nods her agreement. “Good.”

* * *

 

“Cat,” Kara greets, surprised, when she opens the door to see her.

“Kara.”

Kara is still just staring at her so Cat waits, slips her phone into her purse and refrains from taping the toe of her very expensive heels on Kara’s hallway floor. 

“Is Carter okay? Is he safe?”

“He’s as well as can be expected.” Kara’s worry doesn’t fade, so Cat adds, softer, “He’s fine, Kara.”

“Then, I mean, you’re here.”

“Yes, I am.”

“At my apartment.”

“Yes.”

“But _why_?”

“Truthfully,” Cat says, drawing the word out, uncomfortable admitting this, “I’ve never come to you before. And I thought, well, I thought that should probably change.” She hides her discomfort behind a glare. “And because you have been mysteriously M.I.A. so I thought it best to check you’re still alive. And imagine my surprise,” she drawls, eyes scanning Kara from double-socked feet up to her messy hair, “to find you alive and well and playing hooky. Well,” Cat shrugs elegant, a masterful gesture from her showing exactly how little she cares, and turns away. “Good for you,” she calls back. “There is something to be said for celebration, I suppose.”

“Cat, wait.” Kara hesitates at the door, wavering. Then she steps out and follows slowly, padding the few steps to her. She curls a hand around Cat’s wrist and tugs. 

She doesn’t manage to turn Cat on that alone—it’s surprise that makes Cat spin, and opens her eyes wide and her mouth drops open for a split second, a breathy _“oh”_ slipping out. 

“What?” Kara cocks her head to the side. 

“You’re powerless.”

Kara laughs. “Well, yeah. Mostly. A little. I’m,” she lifts a hand to her cheek, brushes her fingers over perfect flawless skin. Cat wants it to be her own fingers. “Healing is back. Mostly.”

“No strength?” Cat asks, pressing forward, eyes sharp and curious. “No flying? No hearing? No,” she waves a hand to Kara’s eyes and the woman shakes her head. 

“Nope. Gone. Well, the hearing isn’t totally gone but,” she tilts her head, “my left ear is better than my right, which makes me feel weird.”

“For how long?”

“I’m not sure if it’s always been better and it’s just more noticeable now or if it’s something that happened recently or if it’s going to fix itself when I get my powers back—umm,” Kara stops herself. “That’s not what you were asking.”

“No. How long are your powers out for?”

“Oh.” Kara hides her worry well. Cat is impressed. “Not sure. Until then, I’m on sick leave. Doctor’s orders.”

“You went to the _doctor_ like this?”

Kara smiles at her, sweet and amused, and that’s not a reaction Cat is used to when it comes to her ‘you’re more stupid than I thought you were’ tone. She’s smiling like Cat has said something silly. “Doctor Danvers,” she says, and Cat purses her lips. Well. Perhaps she had said something silly after all. 

“I see.”

Kara shivers and clutches at her blanket, rubs the sole of one foot over the top of the other, switches to do the same for the other foot. The fabric starts to slip from around her shoulders—the red of it is familiar and Cat rolls her eyes when she realises that it’s Kara’s _cape_. 

“You came outside wearing that?”

“You were out here and I, I thought maybe you wouldn’t wait.”

“You could have left it.”

“It’s _cold,_ ” Kara argues. She reaches up for glasses that aren’t there and, recognising the gesture for what it is—discomfort, nerves, wanting to hide for some reason—Cat reaches over and takes her hand into her own. Kara looks down at their joined hands for a moment then, “So, you want to come in?”

Cat nods. “Please.”

Kara lets Cat in first and immediately starts up with her chatter. 

“So Carter’s definitely fine, right? Because you said fine but, like, is that _fine_ or is it actually fine or, _ow_.” Kara sucks her finger into her mouth, waves Cat off when she rounds on her, worried. “It’s fine, I’m fine, I just closed the door on my finger.”

“You are a disaster. Carter is perfect, of course.”

“He’s a great kid but that’s not exactly what I mean. Is he getting headaches?”

“No. No, he’s healthy.”

They stand still for a moment. Cat examines the room critically. Kara gestures to the bar stools at her kitchen island.  “You can sit, if you want, Miss Grant.”

“Miss—No, it’s Cat, Kara,” she tells her, a little sharp, and Kara looks across at her. 

“Then don’t act like Miss Grant.”

Cat purses her lips. She wonders if Kara knows the extent of what she’s asking—whether she has any clue how long she’s stayed away because this dilemma played over and over again in her head, how she is allowed to fell about it all, what she is allowed to feel, what answers she’s allowed to demand, what she’s allowed to tell Kara because Miss Grant is a journalist, a boss, a woman who puts her career first and considers the needs of the city before her own and Cat, Cat isn’t all that different but she’s attached to Kara and oh how much harder that will make everything. 

She wants to leave again. 

Kara places a cup in front of her. “Coffee? I just made a pot.” Cat nods, murmurs something that might be a please, and Kara pours her a drink. It smells nice—Cat is surprised. She’s not sure that she pays Kara enough for a good blend. That is confirmed when Kara points to the bag in her cupboard. “A gift,” she tells her. “From my cousin.”

“Ah.” She sips. “It’s nice.”

“Mhm. My favourite.”

They’re quiet for a few minutes. Kara fiddles with a band-aid on her hand, smoothes it over with her thumb. When she looks up, her eyes are dark and reserved and Cat suspects that Kara does have some idea of what she was asking after all. 

“If I'm not Miss Grant," she says, placing her cup down, "I... Cat is angry,” Cat warns. 

“Cat probably has a list of reasons to be angry.”

“Cat is angry with _you_.”

“Kara recognises that Cat has reasons to be angry with her.”

“Oh stop it, you sound ridiculous talking in third person.”

“You started it.” Cat glares and Kara smiles back, saccharine sweet. 

“Cat is hurt.”

Kara’s smile fades. She nods down to her cup. “I, I’m sorry. But we deserve to talk about this as. As _us_. Being honest with each other and ourselves. Not using fronts.”

Cat inclines her head to acknowledge Kara’s point. “I have questions as a journalist too, you realise.”

“There’ll be time for that.”

She nods again. “Alright.”

She doesn’t miss the way Kara braces herself. There is a part of Cat, not small but not the largest part of her, that rather enjoys that they are having the conversation while Kara is powerless. It’s a vindictive protective little part of her, barbed, and she uses it from time to time—when she’s under attack, when she has to protect herself, when she’s moving cautious or less cautiously into new ground to conquer—and she hopes that she won’t resort to lashing out with it too much. She hopes that she’s going to let Kara meet her as an equal. 

“You haven’t been to see me,” she begins, and swallows. It feels like too vulnerable a statement and it takes her a minute to swallow the barb that tries to follow immediately. Kara answers it like it was a question.

“I lost my powers. They won’t let me out.”

“I can’t imagine you letting that stop you from doing anything if you really wanted it.”

“Well, Cat,” Kara says, setting her cup down sharply on the counter, flinches like she thinks it’s about to shatter, relaxes when it doesn’t. “It’s not like you’ve come to see me either.” Cat spreads her hands as if to say, ‘ _here I am_ ’, and Kara shakes her head. “Two weeks, Cat. It’s not like you were busting down _my_ door. And this? This doesn’t count—you can’t come here bundling up your high ground and use it against me. If you want to have a _conversation_ I’m all for it—if you came to trade jibes, sorry, I’m all out and I’m too tired for that. And you’re not going to get apologies either. I want to _talk_ to you. I don’t want to be attacked and then forgiven for whatever wrongs you think I’ve committed. It’s deflection and distraction and we keep missing the point and never move on.”

Cat folds her hands in front of her and very purposefully doesn’t make eye contact with Kara. 

She can’t tell if Cat is angry or not but Kara can’t find it in herself to care—she’s weak in everything right now but she's _not_ going to be weak with Cat. 

She shouldn’t have to be. 

It shouldn’t be a fight. 

And she knows Cat knows that too—she knows that Cat faces every challenge with strategy but that won’t work here, or if it does it won’t be genuine and Kara wants that more than anything, a genuine relationship not a transaction that turns into a give and take they want to level out not a competition—Kara refuses to let her strategise them. 

She tops up their coffees though their cups are still mostly full. 

“You’re right,” Cat says eventually, carefully, and Kara tries not to read more into her tone than what is there— _does she sound sour? is she annoyed that I’m right? is she going to fight me on that? am i playing into her game somehow? has Cat thought ten steps ahead and is conceding this for some reason?_

It isn’t fair to Cat and it’ll drive Kara mad to second guess Cat at every step so she lets her breath out slowly and nods, tries to just _trust_. When Cat looks at her with bright eyes, licks her lips, and offers her a small smile, trusting is easier. 

“I was asleep for the first week.”

“Asleep.”

Kara grimaces. “Unconscious.”

“Ah.”

“But you’re right. I could probably have tried to visit you this week.”

“And I could’ve visited you before now. You were right, we both held back. For different reasons, I suspect,” Cat says, eyes intent. “I was scared. And furious.”

“Scared?” Kara asks, confused. And then, more confused, “Furious?”

“Yes.”

Kara makes an impatient noise and waves her hand.   
  
"Forgive me if I’m not immediately forthcoming about my emotions like some _millennial_ ,” Cat sneers.

“The problem isn’t your age or generation, it’s that I’m already vulnerable and you’re not letting yourself be.”

“Well.” Cat leans backwards, away from kara, and then slowly she says, “That’s a surprisingly accurate insight.” Kara flushes unhappily—it was an outburst and she hadn’t meant to say it, even if she did mean it.“I’m not angry, Kara.”

“I am.” Cat makes a small noise and Kara shakes her head. “Not with you. Not with you.” Cat relaxes a touch—an unnecessary movement, not one she would make normally, and Kara smiles when she realises that Cat is letting her see how she feels. She’s sure Cat knows Kara is dissecting everything and it helps so much for Cat’s words to match her expression, stance, actions. 

“Why were you scared?” Kara asks. Cat throws her a disgusted look. 

“Really, Kiera?”

“ _Kara_.”

Cat looks surprised—Kara’s voice is a touch too loud, and sharp—and then she nods. “Kara. I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry. I just don’t want to be Kiera anymore. I want to be, I want to—” she frowns, reaches up to touch her glasses—they still aren’t there, she keeps forgetting, and she looks startled. The glasses are a part of her, a large part, they mean something to her that Cat doesn’t quite understand. She’d like to. For now, she just enjoys the look, the openness it lends to Kara’s face.

“You’re beautiful,” she says. The words slip out. She doesn’t take them back. It’s nothing of what she wanted to say when she came—she’s still angry, still scared—but it is true.

“—mean more to you,” Kara finishes before she registers Cat’s words. “Oh. I—thank you?” She lifts her cup and drinks, looks away. 

Cat clears her throat. “You can call me Kitty when I call you that,” she offers, though her lips twist at the thought and Kara actually laughs. 

“You would hate that.”

“Yes well. Fair is fair.”

“I’d rather you just not call me Kiera like that.” Kara steps over to the island. She’s on the opposite side to Cat but they’re in the same space, at least, and she leans against the wood and into the space. Cat finds herself mimicking the action, leaning in, however slightly. 

“Like what?”

“Like I’m an idiot. I don’t mind when you’re teasing, but, when you aren’t teasing it makes me feel like I don’t matter. I deserve to matter, Cat.”

“So basically you’re asking me to treat you with basic decency?”

Kara’s lips turn upwards and her eyes—they _twinkle_ and Cat wants to roll her eyes because that shouldn’t be humanly possible and it shouldn’t be as endearing as it is. “Don’t hurt yourself,” Kara teases. 

“Hmm.”

“You are a good person, I know you’re capable of it,” Kara continues.

Cat glares at her with little heat behind the look. “Don’t push it.”

Kara pushes. “Why were you scared?” 

“Because I thought you were dead.”

That wasn’t the answer she expected and Kara jerks with surprise, spilling a little of her drink when her cup overturns and she scrambles to right it. She sets it to the side and awkwardly grabs a cloth to dab up the coffee. “I, I, _what?”_

“For a whole day.”

“I—” Kara blinks. “Oh. Rao, Cat,” she stutters, “I am so sorry. I’m _so sorry_. I don’t—“ She considers that for a moment more, nods. “I’m sorry. I guess they didn’t want to get your hopes up. Alex wasn’t sure I’d make it.”

Cat narrows her eyes. They agreed to discuss this as themselves but Cat doesn’t think she can get through this as someone who lo—who _cares_ for Kara. She has to distance herself a little. The change isn’t obvious. A relaxing of her hands, straightening of her spine. An edge to her voice when she asks, “It was close, then?” She still _cares_. That was always her superpower, how much she cared about her stories, but she tightens her hold on all the ways she’s connected, invested, and refuses to let that bias her. Distance. She needs it.

Kara notices. She’s always seen Cat. She hesitates. 

“Tell me the truth,” Cat demands, and Kara nods.

“I don’t know. The details, I don’t know it all. Once Alex got me I know that I fell. Badly. And I blew out my powers badly, still out.” She shrugs. “So, I guess it was close, yeah.” She scrunches up her nose and shrugs, loose, and Cat recognises the role Kara is playing there too. Perfectly average Kara. Perfectly normal Kara. She doesn’t call her out on it—she doesn’t know why Kara needs it but she wouldn’t do it if she didn’t need it, not when she too promised to talk as herself, but she suspects Kara is feeling more than just habit. More than the habit to downplay her powers, downplay the intensity of the fight—perhaps she’s had enough of people looking at her like more than what she is. A god, Kara is not. Or perhaps if she admits how close it was, she’ll feel it all over again. Perhaps she’s too raw for that.

“Got you from where?”

“Um. What did Alex tell you?”

“The Baby Lane told me. She said you were alive.”

“And?”

“That’s _all_ she told me,” Cat clarifies, annoyed. 

“Oh. Did you— Do you want to know what happened?” Cat gives her that look again and sighs. Kara nods. “Right. The tone was being generated by the tech in the giant alien prison that crashed in Nevada with me.”

Cat blinks. “I see.”

“Never thought I would say something like t _hat_ ,” Kara laughs. “Before he died, my uncle told us that it was locked and that as long as it was there, the tone would continue to grow and kill everyone.” Cat nods. “So I flew it away.”

“Where?”

Kara points upwards. She sees when it clicks. 

“Space?”

“Yeah.”

Cat thinks about it for a while. 

“You said Alex got you?”

“She flew my old pod up and,” Kara screws up her face. “Nudged me? Back into the atmosphere, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I don’t really remember. Bits and pieces.” She rubs her arms and tugs her cape around her, shivers. “Mostly, I just remember falling.”

“Falling.” Cat repeats. “Out of space.” Her expression shifts so slowly Kara almost doesn’t register when it changes to anger. _Fury_. “And you asked me why I was scared? You were going to _die_ and you ask me why I was scared?”

“And furious?”

“Irrationally,” Cat waves her hand and Kara bites her tongue to stop herself from asking her to tell her anyway because Cat looks final. “But it’s why I didn’t come to see you. I didn’t,” Cat looks down to her hands, fiddles with the handle of her mug in a a show of uncharacteristic nerves. She throws her shoulders back and faces Kara head on, letting her see—letting herself be vulnerable just as Kara asked. “I didn’t want to come to you if I was angry, Kara. You deserve,” she hesitates. “You deserve so _much_.”

“You should’ve come.”

Cat nods. “Perhaps you’re right.”

Kara drags her stool closer, around the corner to sit facing Cat, her knees pressed against Cat’s thigh. She lays her hand over Cat’s. “How do you feel now?”

Cat doesn’t speak for a long time. 

She flips her hand over and lets Kara’s hand slip comfortably into her own. “ _Scared_.”

“Why?” Kara asks her softly. 

“I told you once that I understand what it means to only be able to act after the fact. To _report_ on what is done.” Cat lets out a slow breath, trying to disguise the way it shudders. “Kara, when you left me on that balcony, I thought we were going to lose and you would die trying to save us or you would save us and die or maybe, _maybe_ , we would all live. Those aren’t odds that I like, Kara. You would be dead and I would be the one writing your exit. You asked me if I would write your story and I _will._ And I  _would_ if you died but do you know what that would be like for me? I can't imagine. To some extent, I can. My father is dead and I have written about him. But this would not be the same. Do you know,” she swallows, “what it’s like waiting to find out if someone is alive or dead?”

“I—”

“It’s not like Schrödinger proposes. You aren’t equally dead or alive, Kara, you’re _dead._ It’s safest to think you’re dead—at least then, maybe, you might still be alive but you don’t let yourself grieve, yet, because what if you’re wrong? And then, then Kara, you start to think maybe you’re _alive._ And my whole body aches with hope and that’s even worse,” she hisses, furious now, and Kara starts to understand, “because at any moment it could be ripped away. And I can’t be angry because you’re saving literally the whole world. I can’t be angry because I know I’m self obsessed, I know I’m a Queen, but it would be a new level of self obsession to want you to stay, to not do it. To even consider asking you not to go and be a goddamn _hero_. So, Kara, you want to know how I’m feeling? I’m feeling _angry_. I’m sad because I know you’ll do it again, I’m furious because you’ll leave me, I’m proud because you would do _anything_ and I’m scared because my son loves you and you’re going to break his heart, you’re going to break our heart.”

She never deviates from her cold, low voice, and Kara feels the chill in her bones.

It’s hard to breathe, suddenly, and far too cold, and she tugs shaking fingers out of Cat’s hand and wraps her cape more tightly around her shoulders. She buries her nose in it and tries to pick out Clark’s smell—the warm, sharp smell they share—and slowly, with fingers brushing through her hair, she calms down. 

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “I’m sorry. You had every right to say all of that. I didn’t mean to, to freak out.”

“It’s alright, Kara.” Cat shushes her. “It’s alright, just breathe.”

Cat smells of perfume and sweat and makeup and Kara leans into her. 

“You are more than I could ever understand, Kara,” she murmurs. “It’s confusing for me. I like to know things. I want the truth, the whole truth, more than anything else in the world. I want to set things out so they make sense. I want to direct the way people think, I want to forge something. And then a girl in a cape flies into the scene and with a smile she does incredible things, _impossible_ things, and I have to re-evaluate what I’ve done. What I’ve made. She pushes me to be better. To think harder, to work harder, to love more. But it’s rarely pleasant to be confronted by your failings, Kara.”

“What do you think your failings are?”

“Don’t be coy. It suits you, but it doesn’t suit this conversation.”

Kara can breathe properly again so she pulls back. “What are your failings?” she asks again. 

“We both know I’m cold. More shrewd than sweet. More interested in the basic truth than in the merit of a built truth. A truth to _strive_ for. No, the world isn’t kind and gentle and easy, but I don’t have to perpetuate the harshness of it. And for too long, that’s exactly what I’ve done.”

“You don’t have to be kind to care. And I know you care. Carter,”

“Carter is an exception, not the rule.”

“Adam too.” Cat concedes that with a nod. “Me.” Another nod, more hesitant. “And you say you don’t care about the rest, but I disagree.” Cat scoffs and Kara shrugs. “Maybe you’ve been harsh going after the truth but you’ve been the most harsh with the liars and the cheats and the people who have never given kindness without something to gain. And I think, I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” Kara frowns, trying to set out her thoughts so they make sense. Because how she feels about Cat isn’t a straight line. It’s nebulous, it’s expansive, and trying to tug that into something like order is hard. “Kindness isn’t a bribe, kindness isn’t supposed to be a reward. Kindness should be freely given. And you are’t always kind but you are rarely, _rarely_ cruel and you treat everyone with the respect they deserve. You’ve never pretended to be something that you aren’t—people trust that you say what you mean, and _I_ think that means more than what you think it does.”

“I know the value of truth, Kara. It’s what I’ve built my empire on.”

“And you underestimate the amount of your empire is built on _your_ reputation, Cat! You’re not just a figurehead to them. You’re an actual leader and you need to trust your readers are smart. That’s what you tell your mother, isn’t it?” Cat scowls at the mention of her mother and jerks a nod. “That’t they’re smart, that they _understand_. You’re the one that taught people to look for the truth, to read between the lines, to read critically, to want critical information and to understand it. You gave it to them and you keep giving that standard and they keep reading _your_ work because that’s what they want and you’re the only one who can do it right. Why do you think they wouldn’t do the same to you?” Cat blinks. “You taught me. I wouldn’t be half the hero I am without working for you. You think I just flew in and magically fixed things? You’re _wrong_. I learned from you. I learned so much. So take the credit you deserve, Cat. You’ve never been uncertain about that before, don’t start now.”

Cat swallows. “I thought we were supposed to be arguing. Talking about why we stayed away for two weeks.”

Kara nods. Folds a little into herself now her righteousness is fading. “Right.”

“Actually,” Cat sits again, turns sharp eyes on Kara. “I told you why _I_ stayed away.”

“Scared and furious is half a reason, Cat. You could’ve come to yell at me.”

“I didn’t want to do that. You almost died to save the world, you didn’t deserve that.”

“Because I deserve _so much_ ,” Kara repeats back to her and Cat nods. 

“Yes.”

“Why did you come today?” She frowns, the thought occurring to her suddenly. “If you were staying away, why now? Why today?”

Cat purses her lips. 

“Cat?”

“I…The Tribune pitched an article about your untimely demise,” she says, cool and calm. Her fingers claw around her mug in sharp opposition to her tone. “I told them not to bring me anything they couldn’t verify.”

“I’m sure you said it just like that,” Kara teases.

“Yes, well,” Cat rolls her eyes. “You’re familiar with how I deal with imbeciles.”

Kara thinks about it for a moment. Then, guessing, “You glared at them until they ran away.” Cat sniffs. “That’s my favourite. I also like it when you throw notes with synonyms for idiotic at them.”

“Even though you have to clean them up afterwards?”

“You always come up with a new one, it’s worth it.”

Cat makes a sharp noise in her throat—a disagreement, a laugh, a bit of both. “We’re _arguing_ , Kara. Do stop distracting me.”

“Of course, Miss Grant. So, the article?”

“It kept bothering me. And your desk was so empty and I,” Cat shook her head. “I thought it was awful when we were pretending to be professional. Did I ever tell you that?” she asks her, looking distant and vulnerable and Kara takes her hand again. She doesn’t ever want to stop touching her. 

“I hated it too.”

“It was so much worse, thinking you might be dead.” Cat turns away. Her eyes closed, Kara takes in her profile eagerly, getting to stare without Cat knowing. Her throat bobs with a sharp swallow. “And the _wondering_. I’m very intelligent, Kara,” she says, opening her eyes and glaring at Kara like it’s her fault that Cat’s brain works overtime. “Do you know how many scenarios I came up with? How badly you might be hurt?” Kara squeezes her hand. “I didn’t want to confirm them. But today, today I just needed to _know_.”

“I’m sorry no one told you,” Kara says again. Cat nods. “My turn?” she asks when Cat just stares at her and then Cat nods again. Kara’s heart flutters. Her fingers shake a little—noticeably, clearly, because Cat tightens her grip. “Okay. I was telling the truth, by the way. They’ve had an agent on me the whole time, at least one. And my _mother_ , Rao,” she shakes her head and Cat laughs. “She’s not as bad as yours. She’s not bad at all,” Kara confesses with a smile that crinkles the corners of her eyes. “She’d like you. Angry, scared, over protective. She wanted to strap me down to the bed to make sure I never get hurt again.”

“I assure you, I like the sound of that for very different reasons, Kara.”

Kara flushes. “Cat, at least I was being nice when I distracted you.”

“Oh trust me, I can be _very_ nice.”

“Cat!”

The woman rolls her eyes and waves her free hand. “Yes, alright. I’m—“

“Nervous? Deflecting?” Kara says knowingly. Cat purses her lips. “I think you might be right, though.”

“I usually am.”

Kara continues like Cat hadn’t spoken. “I could’ve come to you if I really wanted. If I really wanted to, I wouldn’t have stopped until I was in front of you.”

Cat’s face pales. Kara thinks for a moment that she might try to take her hand away but instead, she grips more tightly and Kara doesn’t wince because the pain is slight and welcome. “I was holding back, you’re right. For different reasons. I—” 

Cat’s phone buzzes angrily between them and they both stare at it. 

“I can turn it off.”

“Your lunch break is long over,” Kara reminds her. “You have an empire to run. This can wait.”

Cat nods, slips her hand away. “Of course. I’ll answer this.”

“Go for it,” Kara says, leaping onto the reprieve. “I’ll make you a latte to go.”

Cat looks up from her phone, surprised. Kara thinks she's surprised too that Kara isn't just hurrying her away, out of her home. That she wants her to linger. “You can do that?”

“Yeah, I got a fancy new machine. Just don’t tell Alex that I’m using it. I’m not supposed to do it without adult supervision,” she laughs. “I keep burning my fingers. I _heal_ , of course, after a little while, but apparently my saying ouch every ten minutes really gets on Alex’s nerves and she banned me.”

“Hmm.”

Cat slips her glasses out of her purse and reads the message that had interrupted them—“I’m going to call Finance back,” she says and Kara nods, frowning at the coffee machine—and she’s gone for a few minutes. 

When Kara hisses, she hadn’t heard Cat finish her conversation or return from the living room but suddenly she’s behind her. 

“Again? Really?”

“I’m getting better,” Kara insists, and lifts her fingers to her mouth. The latte, at least, is finished and perfect. 

Before she can suck on the reddened digits, Cat has taken her hand and she examines them closely. Kara watches carefully—breath locked to bursting in her chest, heart _thumping_ —and until the very last moment she tells herself that Cat will let go, that she’s imagining this, and then Cat is lifting her fingers further towards her own mouth and surely, Kara thinks, surely she’s just going to kiss her hand or blow on her fingers, that’s all. So, when her fingers are sucked into Cat’s mouth, she’s the furthest from ready. 

Kara whines, eyes wide. Her knees buckle and Cat slings an arm around her waist, moves quickly to slam Kara against the counter. 

A dribble of coffee spills out of the to-go cup. 

Kara gasps, pain flaring in a line across her back. 

Cat’s mouth isn’t helping the burning on her fingers—her mouth is _hot_ , it’s really not medicinal at all, a distant part of Kara’s brain allows her to think before it shuts down along with any part of her that isn’t thinking _Rao_ and _hot_ and _Cat Cat Cat_. 

When Cat releases her fingers, there is a ring of lipstick smudges and Kara groans, leans her head back to knock against the cupboard. 

“Oh Rao,”

“Deep breath, Kara,” Cat advises her, and Kara has half a _what_ on her lips—it never sees the light of day. It jumps, half-formed, from her lips when Cat’s lips land on the side of her neck and Kara cries out. 

“Oh _fuck._ ” The words, or the way her voice cracks, must please Cat because Kara knows she feels those wicked lips turn up and she _knows_ Cat sucks a little harder. 

Cat pulls back after a minute, lips pale—all her lipstick is gone, Kara realises, and her eyes slam closed when she realises what that means. It’s all on _her_. 

“We shouldn’t,” Kara whispers because they haven’t talked, they haven’t seen each other in two _weeks_ and she thought maybe the feelings would go away, that’s what she was going to tell Cat—she thought maybe it was a product of the fear and the worry and the stress that had been building and that was why they had kissed, that was why she had wanted Cat to hold her, that was why she had said those precious words to her and two weeks gone without Cat and the feelings _haven’t_ done. They’ve only grown and she groans now and holds a trembling hand between them. “Cat, we shouldn’t,” she says again, but she _wants_ and Cat slots herself into that gap like her hand isn’t there at all and she looks up at Kara. 

“Just answer me this,” Cat demands, and Kara sees in her eyes she’s trying hard to keep it a demand. Her eyes make it a desire, a hope. Kara holds her breath. “Do you want this?”

Kara swallows hard—she tries to hold steady and send Cat away because that’s what she should do but it’s so _hard_ and maybe, she thinks, she’s done doing the hard thing, the right thing. “ _Yes_ ,” she husks. 

Cat presses up against her, winds her arms around Kara’s waist. “Then,” she says, voice dripping with promise, “you should visit me next.”

“Wait - what?”

Cat steps back and lifts her takeaway cup to her lips, sips. “Oh. This is good. Thank you.”

Kara feels her powers curl through her—weak, pitiful to how she normally feels, but enough that she can move to bracket Cat against the island quicker than Cat can move away and she grins when she sees the colour in Cat’s eyes swallowed by black. 

“I have to get back to work,” Cat tries to say firmly, but there is a slight waver that Kara takes advantage of.

“You want this too.” Hers isn’t a question. She doesn’t need Cat’s faint nod, but she appreciates it. “Go, then,” she tells Cat, flippant, pretending however badly that she isn’t affected by _this,_ and she grins when Cat scowls at her. 

This time, when Cat curls a hand around the back of her neck, she gives as much as she gets. When Cat pulls away first to get a better angle, Kara reaches up and takes her chin in a sure hand and tips Cat’s face how she wants it. Holds her still. Cat _shivers._ Kara groans into her ear and Cat shivers again and Kara wants to feel that again, wants to see if Cat makes sounds too—she wants and wants and Cat wants too. So she presses a kiss to her jaw and her neck and, driven by something, some need to see Cat angry or needy or to mark her like she’s sure the lipstick marks her own neck, she pulls Cat’s neckline to the side and sucks a red mark onto her collar bone until Cat is panting into her ear. Then, finally, she pulls away with a drag of her teeth over the mark and watches as Cat puts herself back together.

“You’ll come to see me.” Cat commands her, and she makes an annoyed sound in her throat when she checks her phone that had been distantly buzzing in her bag. “Think about you want to say,” Cat suggests carefully, as gently as she can, and Kara nods. Cat had been honest— _so_ honest—and Kara wants to do right by both of them by repaying that in kind. It’s terrifying but in the good way. Like flying for the first time. Or, maybe, it’s what humans feel like in free fall. A lot scary, a lot exciting.

“Tonight?”

“No,” Cat sighs. “No, this work is going to keep me busy. Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Kara agrees readily. “I’ll get away.”

“Good.” Cat lifts a hand to her cheek, leans in, stops before she really moves. “A kiss is not my best idea,” she tells Kara with a wry little smile and Kara shrugs. Takes a comically large step backwards. “An assistant is supposed to make my life _easier_.”

“I’m on sick leave. Technically, I’m not your assistant right now.”

“No,” Cat agrees, eyes _burning_ a trail over her. “You definitely are not.” She clicks her bag closed. “Goodbye,” she says shortly, and marches out without another word. 

Kara would be offended if she didn’t know the brusque treatment was because Cat wanted to kiss her until she was weak. 

Well. Weak _er_. 

Kara flings herself down onto the couch and sighs, grinning, up to the ceiling. They have a lot to talk about still but Cat—she presses her fingers to her lips and grins wider still—Cat wants her too. 

//

“You have a guest today?” Alex asks her later, taking her through some exercises in her living room. They had moved the couches out to make space and Kara was sweating her way through sit-ups and push-ups and trying not to complain bitterly at how much _harder_ it is without powers. 

“Huh? No, no guests,” Kara laughs and grunts. “Hold my feet, Alex, I can do more. Ten more?”

“No, don’t push yourself.”

“I can do it!”

“Sure you can, but you can also deflect.”

“Deflect?” Kara laughs again, and since Alex isn’t buying it she props herself up onto her elbows and looks down at her sister, who is staring at her with a curious, almost amused look. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“ _Alex_ ,” she whines. “What?”

She just shrugs and holds out a hand for Kara, helps her to her feet. “Stretching. Warm down and then you can have a shower.”

“Thank _Rao_.”

“And then we can have dinner and you can tell me why you have lipstick on your neck.” Kara’s hand slaps over the mark—her skin is still burning where Cat’s soft lips had been—and flushes when Alex grins at her, far too pleased. “Let me guess. Winn was wearing lipstick this time.”

“Ew, _no_. I mean,” Kara flushes, “sure, yes, that’s what happened.”

Alex laughs. “I can’t believe you’ve kept your identity secret for this long. You’re terrible at lying.” Kara laughs too loud at that and Alex narrows her eyes. “Who else found out? Your landlord? Your pizza delivery guy?”

“My neighbour,” she mumbles, hanging her head. 

“Which one? Because the old one isn’t a problem, no one will believe them. But if it’s the pretty lady we might have a problem.”

“Oh yeah, it’ll be such a problem to wine and dine her and tell her how important it is to keep it to herself, you have _such_ a hard job, Alex.” 

“If she turns out to be a creep I’ll have to wipe her memory,” Alex points out and then she jabs Kara in the side. “God you’re so _terrible_ at this.”

“Hey! Oh _cramp_ , ouch!” Kara stumbles sideways onto the couch and grins over at Alex. “It’s the old neighbour anyway. I was helping her with her cat who got trapped under the radiator, you know how Scruffy does that, and I didn’t have my glasses on and she said how nice it is to live next to a hero. She said I’m very kind,” Kara beams, and Alex drops down next to her, pats her knee.

“You’re an idiot.”

“Hey!”

“And are you sure you know what you’re doing with Cat?”

“No,” Kara sighs, and she leans her head on Alex’s shoulder and smiles, twines their fingers together. “Not at all,” she tells her happily. “But I like her.”

“If she hurts you, I’m not above shooting her.”

“She’s a civilian.”

“I’ll make it a flesh wound.”

//

Kara showers and curls up onto the couch again, muscles aching pleasantly. Alex makes them a stir fry—full of vegetables since “you can get scurvy now if you’re not careful, Kara”—and halfway through dinner, a thought occurs to her. It’s a nice evening—warm, the air dry and light and her stomach hurts from laughing and her sister makes a face when she picks the mushrooms out even though she’s the one who added them because Kara loves them and the sounds of the city are distant and muted and Kara leans against the reassuring weight of the table and taps her fork against her plate thoughtfully. 

“Kara?” Alex is looking at her worriedly, hand stretched halfway across the space between them. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she nods. “I was just thinking.”

“About?”

Kara waves her hand around her awkwardly. “Just, if I never get my powers back,” she starts and Alex’s face twists worriedly so Kara closes the distance and squeezes her hand, grins at her, “this isn’t such a bad life.”

“Kara,” she breathes. “I don’t understand you.” She shakes her head, squeezes back. “You have had so many reasons to give up, so many reasons to be less kind and happy, but you,” Alex leans back in her head and gestures to Kara. “You’re not. You always come out stronger. Brighter.”

“Don’t you know that I could only do that because I had you?” Kara tells her, and Alex swallows, blinks quickly and has to look away. She nods awkwardly and Kara grins. “I can still be a consultant, right?” she asks, and Alex rolls her eyes and nods and is about to answer when Kara cries out, clamps her hands down on her ears.

“Kara? _Kara_ —what is it?”

“It’s—“ Her face blanches, heart lurches in her chest. “ _No_. Rao, no, it’s the tone. Cat, Carter, they’re in danger, I have to go,” she spits out and races into her bedroom to spin into suit she had hung up a week ago. “Alex,” she calls, emerging.

“Go,” Alex agrees. She’s run to the living room and pulled the gun she keeps strapped to the underside. “I’ll go to the DEO—”

“No, you’re my backup. Follow me to the apartment. Call on the way.”

Alex nods. There’s been little alien activity over the last few weeks so it’s likely to be a human danger. And Alex Danvers is a match for any human. 

Kara doesn’t even have to think about flying—she throws herself out the window, knowing that her powers are back, and she zips between the buildings, dives through the conveniently open window, opening her sense to locate her people. 

Carter—standing in the middle of the living room, watch open. Cat—in her study. 

“ _What’s wrong_?” she asks Carter urgently. She storms through the apartment, opens all the doors, and she must be making too much noise because Cat comes out of her study, glasses on her nose, and frowns at her son. 

“Carter, what—Kara? What are you doing here? You have your powers!”

“What’s wrong? What’s _wrong_ Cat? The tone—” she asks again, starts to say, and the answer occurs to Cat and Kara at the same time. They round on Carter. “Turn it off,” Kara orders him. Carter clicks his watch closed and gulps. She raises a hand to her ear. “Alex. False alarm.”

“ _You sure?”_

“Yeah. I’m sure. You can tell them to stand down.” 

“You need me still?”

She considers that for a moment—she hasn’t really been without Alex for most of the last two weeks and for a moment she wants to say _yes please I can’t do this_ but then she sighs. “No.”

“Call me when you’re done. Glad you're back in action.”

She meets Cat’s eyes and gives her the barest nod, makes her way into Cat’s study to pour a drink with shaking hands and tries not to listen as Cat scolds her son.

“ _Carter, you can’t just use that whenever you feel like it. Did you see her face? You_ terrified _her!”_

_“We hadn’t seen her in two weeks, mom.”_

_“For reasons.”_

_“Really? For reasons? That’s not an answer.”_

_“You’re right,”_ Cat concedes. “ _I don’t know the reasons yet but I do know that you still shouldn’t have used that. You could have called her if you wanted to talk to her.”_

_“She could’ve called us too!”_ He sounds righteous. He sounds _upset_. Kara’s heart fractures a little. Carter doesn’t sound fine—Cat had told her he was fine and she hadn’t been lying and her heart fractures a little more when she thinks that maybe Cat hadn’t known that Carter was so upset either. 

_“Carter, what is this about?”_

_“She said she_ loved _me. And then she doesn’t come see us? Maybe she_ deserves _to be scared.”_

_“Carter!”_ Kara knows that tone from when she and Alex had misbehaved as children and she expects to hear him being grounded or sent to her room. She cocks her head to the side and sinks into the office couch to listen more closely—beneath their arguing, she can hear the young, worried thump of Carter’s heart and the more mature pace of Cat’s, a faint tremor of worry underlining it too. “ _Do you mean that? You’re hurt so you want to hurt her too?”_

_“Maybe.”_

_“Yes or no?”_

_“No. No_ ,” he says softly. “ _I just…You want to see her too and I know you miss her. I just wanted her to see us and it’s obvious she only comes when we’re in danger and”_

_“Oh Carter.”_ Kara hears the whisper of cloth, knows that Cat has crouched next to him. Or maybe they’re sitting. She closes her eyes and turns away to not use her x-ray vision—just because she can’t block out their voices doesn’t mean she won’t try to give them privacy. “ _That’s not true,sweetheart. She’s been hurt.”_

_“She looks fine to me,”_ Carter says stubbornly, and Kara huffs a laugh because she can just imagine his pout, his suspicious glance at his mother. 

“ _I saw her today.”_

_“You did?”_

_“Yes. I was sitting at work and I, I wanted so desperately to know why she was ignoring us.”_

_“You feel like this too!”_ Carter says, relieved, mostly, and still so very upset.

“ _Yes, Carter. I was angry and hurt. But when I got there, she didn’t have her powers. She was under house arrest—you know how clumsy she is, darling, she’s a danger to herself and the rest of the world as a human. She had a bandaid on every finger bar one.”_ Carter laughs a little and Cat runs a hand through his hair. “ _I know it can be hard when you’re hurting, but sometimes there are very good reasons for the way people act. I trust that Kara was doing the right thing for herself. Can you trust that?”_

_“Yes_ ,” Carter says, very quietly. 

“ _You’re allowed to be hurt, you’re allowed to feel that sweetheart, but when you feel like that I want you to_ talk _to me. Or someone else, if you feel like you can’t talk to me. I understand why you felt like this was the right thing to do. You were hurt and angry, but that doesn’t mean that you can scare her like that.”_

_“But I don’t understand.”_

_“You’ll find there are many things even your wonderful brain won’t understand, Carter.”_

“ _Mom, don’t try and placate me. She didn’t try to come to us, she didn’t try and call me_.” He tries to hide a sniff but Kara hears it. She blinks back tears when she hears the kiss Cat presses to his forehead, the soothing way she cards her fingers through his hair. “ _Why didn’t she try? If I was hurt, I would want to be with you.”_

_“Yes. But she was with people who she trusted to look after her.”_

_“She doesn’t trust us?”_ Carter asks her.

Cat hesitates. “ _That’s not what I meant. Kara is different to us.”_

_“Because she’s an alien.”_

_“Yes, dear.”_

_“You’re saying she has different needs,”_ he realises.

“ _Yes. Exactly. And she has a family of her own. I think maybe she needed to be with them for a little while. To get better.”_

_“Because she got hurt.”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Oh.”_

“ _Now, I can’t tell you what to do—or, I could, but you’re in those precocious teenage years, aren’t you?”_ Carter huffs and Cat laughs. “ _I won’t tell you what to do. Think about it for a little while and then we’ll talk about the consequences tomorrow after I’ve spoken with Kara. Alright?”_

_“Yeah. Alright.”_

_“Good._ ” He stands and starts off towards his room. “ _Carter?”_

_“Yes?”_

_“For what it’s worth, I know Kara loves you. As soon as she saw me, you’re the first person she asked after.”_

_“Really?”_

_“Really. There are demands on her that we can’t possibly understand. I’m not saying she acted perfectly either, darling, but I do think there are things she has to do that we have no idea about. She’s a hero—a certain modicum of secrecy is necessary.”_

_“Right. Kara. Secret.”_

_“Yes, well, no doubt that’s another reason why she was under house arrest.”_

Carter laughs and he’s almost at his bedroom when he says, “ _Do you think she’s angry with me?”_

Kara respects the way Cat always thinks about what she tells him. She doesn’t have to think about this. Instantly, she says, “ _No. She’s not angry with you.”_ She thinks about the rest of her answer though before she continues, “ _I do think she was scared. That you were in danger_.”

“ _Oh. Because she loves me?”_

_“Yes, darling.”_

_“Okay.”_ His bedroom door creaks a little. _“I’m going to think about that. Can I talk to her tomorrow?”_

_“I’m sure she’ll try and make sure to speak with you.”_

_“Okay. G’dnight.”_

_“Goodnight, Carter. Sleep well.”_

Cat stands outside his bedroom for a little while and Kara’s nerves jump up a notch with every quiet step she takes back to her study. 

Finally, the door opens, and Kara looks up. 

“How much of that did you hear?”

“All of it,” Kara admits softly. 

Cat nods, a little distant as though enforcing that in her memory. “I hadn’t noticed. He’s been a little on edge but I thought that was because of the whole affair, and the bomb. We’re looking for a new school. He isn’t comfortable being in the auditorium anymore, or the science room.” Kara nods, sad but not surprised. She can’t imagine what it must be like for him—for all of them—to have been controlled. Alex told her that it was as though she was there but not there, that she could see and hear and understand everything that was going on but she didn’t _care_ that she was doing horrible things. She can imagine how terrifying that must be for Carter, who’s aware that his brain is already different from other kids. “If I had known that he was upset about you, I would have contacted you much sooner.”

“Me too. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I _never_ meant to abandon him,” she tells Cat fiercely. “I tried to talk to all of you, I did. And you said that if I wanted to I could have left but you don’t understand, I had an agent on me at all times. I can barely do a sit-up as a human let alone take down a trained operative, and I gave messages to James and Winn and Alex but,”

“You did?”

“You never got them?”

“I got the courtesy “she’s alive” and then nothing.”

“Oh.” Kara’s face falls. “I’m—if I had known, Cat, I would never have let them get away with it, I would've insisted,”

“And your phone? Computer?”

“I broke my phone when I fell. And my computer is at work.”

“I see.” Cat glances down to the glass in her hands. “I see you’ve helped yourself to my bar.” Kara smiles. “Pour me one? Whiskey.” It’s in her hands before she can finish the word and she shakes her head. “God, you’re useful sometimes.” She takes a long pull from the glass and then sets it down on the corner of her desk, sits in the chair next to Kara. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I didn’t know he would do that.”

“It’s fine.”

“I meant to give you time,”

“Cat, it’s _fine_.”

“You know what you want to say, then?” Cat asks her and she reaches out for her glass again.

“Not really. But I’ve never really been one for making plans.” Cat acknowledges that with a tilt of her glass in Kara’s direction. Kara takes it as a cue to start, too, and she suddenly realises that maybe for a girl like her, a girl without Cat’s experience as a person, as a person in relationships, as a person whose mission whose life has been all about writing about words, maybe she _should_ have planned something. “I,” she says, and gives Cat a half smile, trying to hide the panic. What she wants to say could be so easily misconstrued and she doesn’t _want_ that but she thinks if she just blurts it all out then it will be so she needs to build this properly. 

 

So she talks. And tries to make herself understood.

“I lose control, sometimes. I get overwhelmed. And Alex, Alex has like ten gun analogies for what I do. I do off half-cocked or I go in guns blazing. Something like that.” Kara grips at her cape. “What it means, in the end, is that I can be reckless with myself and, and with some of the choices I make. The, the things that I say.” She peeks a look at Cat. Face impassively curious. 

“I hear a lot. And I _feel_ ,” Kara lets her filters down for a moment and shivers—it’s cool in Cat’s apartment and the glass in her hand is smooth—seductively smooth, Kara wants to describe it, with a curve that never ends and the minor imperfections are so obvious to her questing fingers and her eyes and they’re _beautiful_ and it’s beautifully crafted despite or maybe because of these fascinating tiny burst bubbles of heat trapped in the glass, the faint faint warps, and she gets lost in it until Cat says, 

“Kara,” 

very soft, guiding her back. 

Kara gives Cat that small, abashed smile. She places the glass to the side and wraps her hands in her cape she tugs over her lap.

"You told me you were scared. Well, I get scared too sometimes.” Kara lets the words slip out between them. In another conversation, with another person, these are words that Kara might have blurted out thoughtlessly. Blushes, stammered to explain herself.

But Cat sits still and with a tilt of her head she demands the truth—with an open window, a bottle of whiskey, and in a room with little history for them, where they both feel safe, there is just Cat, asking for the truth, and giving Kara all the time she needs to figure it out. 

“I…” Kara shakes her head. That hadn't been the right start either. 

She wonders how Clark made this decision, how he had this talk with Lois. 

“I was saying," she clears her throat, she tries again, "I feel a lot. And that would be fine, except that I can crush a block of cement between two fingers. And for as long as I can remember, whenever it gets too much I have to use up these feelings or, or shut them down. For years, I shut them down.” She reaches up for glasses that aren’t there and look at Cat meaningfully. “Lead lined. For vision, mostly. Hearing too.”

Cat nods. She looks utterly content to listen—content isn’t the right word, Kara thinks, taking in Cat’s reserved posture and clear eyes. She’s ready—determined—to listen, to draw every last word out of Kara, to reserve judgement until the final note settles. Kara swallows hard. Cat—a renowned writer in her own right, more than CEO she’s a journalist first and foremost—is going to pick her apart with sharp eyes and not a single word and Kara is going to let her.

It’s the worst possible decision where Supergirl is concerned, Alex would tell her. 

But she’s not just Supergirl with Cat. 

So she continues. 

“Ever since I came out as Supergirl, I’ve been feeling more again. I don’t have to ignore when someone is hurting—I can _help_. And it’s wonderful,” Kara breathes. "But I hear so much more pain now and sometimes it feels like it never ends. I do my best and it helps when I have an enemy to focus on. Something I can actually do.” Kara hesitates. “There are other feelings I,” she shakes her head. “I just shut them down. And it’s not good because sooner or later they come to light and it’s always harder to deal with. Self doubt,” she gives Cat at the hint of a raised eyebrow. “I took it out on James, though he kind of deserved it.” Kara crinkles her nose, still the tiniest bit annoyed. “He didn’t believe in me, that I could be a hero in my own right and I yelled at him.” 

The tiny breath Cat lets out is a scoff—Kara _knows_ it is and she frowns. “I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal but we both had to work on trust. And Alex, we used to keep secrets from each other. Big secrets. Secrets we probably haven’t fully dealt with. And sometimes I’m so _angry_ ,” Kara says quietly, looking down at her hands in fists and she grips her cape instead. “I have all this power and I could _do_ something about it and I’m scared because I know what kind of person I would be if I ever gave into that.”

She sighs. 

Cat waits. 

Kara picks out the light of a warm star and lets the familiarity of it—small, round, a little tender orb—settle her. Centre her. 

“Sometimes, I’m not sure what I’m feeling.” Kara peers over at Cat, who seems to understand that what comes next is about her. “Just that it’s overwhelming and I know that it isn’t bad.” She gnaws on her lip for a moment. “You held onto me for hours,” she whispers and Cat’s eyes widen instantly. “I’ve always—you’ve never been _just_ my boss. I’ve always admired you so much and I’ve always wanted to help you, to help you work yeah but to help _you_. And every time you pushed me harder, I wanted to succeed to prove to you that I could. Prove that your faith in me wasn’t unfounded. I wanted to see those glimpses of respect.” Kara tilts her head, her lips pull up into a small smile. Nervous. “Did I imagine them?”

Cat’s fingers slide down the stem of her wine glass. She shakes her head no. “You didn’t imagine them. You’ve always impressed me. Even before Supergirl.”

“Except when I brought you a burrito,” Kara grins. Her smile falls away when Cat doesn’t smile, just looks over her appraisingly. Cat isn’t going to let her break the moment with some half hearted joke, it seems, and Kara looks down at her hands again. 

“You have always been exceptional,” Cat tells her, and Kara feels warm all over. “It’s more obvious now, in part because you are accepting it and it’s hard to hide, especially for someone like you.”

“Someone like me?”

“Guileless. Frankly, a terrible liar.”

Kara rolls her eyes and doesn’t miss the smile Cat allows herself, behind her wine glass as she sips. 

“There are worse things to be.”

“Mm.” Cat lifts her shoulders a touch, inclines her head in a fraction of a nod. 

“But.” Kara’s breath catches and she draws on everything she has, everything she is, not to waver now. “I haven’t been honest with you. And I’ve avoided you and…hurt you,” she says, and peeks up from under her lashes to check. Cat goes very still and Kara’s heart pangs. She did. She hurt Cat. “I’m not telling you this to, to gain your forgiveness or anything like that,” she prefaces. “I’m telling you this because you deserve to know all the facts. And because I want to tell you. And because I hurt you when I avoided you and I don’t want to do that anymore. Hurt you.” She throws her shoulders back and, with a deep breath, lifts her chin. 

“Kara,” Cat blurts out. “Don’t. Not unless you actually want to.”

Kara pauses. Softens when she realises that she must have looked like she was throwing herself into battle. She nods and stands, throws her cape off. She zips into Cat’s room and pulls out some leggings that might fit and a shirt and takes off her supersuit, all in seconds. When Cat blinks, the suit is discarded messily on the floor and Kara is sitting again. She's dragged the chair close—still an arms length away but much closer than before. 

“I borrowed some clothes.”

“I see that.”

“I didn’t want to say it while I was,” Kara twists her mouth thoughtfully. “ _Her_ ,” she settles on. “Supergirl is a part of me but she’s not me and she’s not who I am with you, always. And I said earlier, no pretence.”

“I recall,” Cat nods. 

“Okay. No pretence. Just you and me." She sits up, swallows. She's not scared—she's _very_ scared—but this feels right. "What I said to you, on the balcony,” Kara says, and Cat’s eyes shift from cooly interested to _blazing_ because it’s _happening_. “What I said then and what I want to say now—and I _do_ want to Cat—is that, I, I told you that I loved you. When we were on the balcony. That’s what I said.”

The words sit between them, too far out to be taken back, waiting for Cat to look them over and accept or reject them.

“I know,” Cat tells her. “I didn’t know the words, exactly, but I did know the meaning."

“You did?”

Cat nods. “And I… I would like to think that means something too.”

“I,” Kara nods slowly. “I think so. I think,” she is well aware of how romantic an idea it is that she’s about to present but the light is low and the taste of whiskey is on her lips and tongue and Cat is lounging in her chair and telling her she knows that Kara loves her, and a surge of bravery loosens her tongue. “I think that people in love know the words however they’re said.”

Cat smirks—she knows what Kara thought, she’s think it too. They are sensible people not prone to romantic ideas like that, not the grand, not the forever ideas. They are the people who are too big for love like that, people who are prone to losing love, losing love like the ordinary people get to have grand adventures in small lives—they live big adventures, more blood than anything, more fear than hope, and a balance that feels ever shifting towards more loses than victories. 

“Love.” She shakes her head. “Another reason I stayed away. Can you really imagine it working between us?”

“I’ve imagined it a hundred times,” Kara says. “I can’t stop imagining it.” Cat doesn’t reply to that. “I think we deserve it enough to try. I want it,” she presses on, and she stands and takes the glass out of Cat’s hand and kneels next to her chair. “I want it more than anything.”

“Anything?”

Kara hesitates. “I want it more than I wanted to save the world,” she whispers, and Cat’s eyes flash. 

“You know how attracted I am to power,” Cat murmurs, and smirks, and Kara shakes her head. 

“Please, don’t deflect like that. Just tell me. _Please_.”

Cat frowns down at her and it never occurs to Kara that it could be a rejection—it _isn’t_ , she can feel the answer already, feel it thrumming between them—and eventually Cat nods, closes her eyes, nods again. 

“You aren’t alone,” she tells her, tone heavy with all the multitudes of what that means—a planet, a home, a family, a partner, a _love_. More.

* * *

 

There isn’t long enough between villains—there never is a long enough time between the fights, but there is long enough for them to know that they have each other, there is long enough for Carter to settle again, for Alex to meet Cat and Carter as her sister instead of an agent, for Eliza to hear about Cat even if they don’t have a family dinner quite yet. There is long enough for Kara to have her promotion, for her to tell her friends. 

There will be time enough after the next fight for more.

She makes her way into Cat’s office, stares at the sky that darkens with the newest threat and she turns to her. “Sorry about the update meeting, I guess it’ll have to be delayed. I have a world to save,” she grins. Cat rolls her eyes. 

“The world can just _wait_ a damn minute then!” She grabs the collar of Kara’s suit and tugs her closer. It takes everything inside her not to demand that Kara come back, come _home_. It’s all she wants. But it isn’t fair. “Thank you, Supergirl,” is what she ends up saying, and she curls a hand around the back of her neck and kisses her firmly. “Go save the world.”

Kara nods. Steps away. 

“Cat? Can I ask you a question?”

“For you, Supergirl, anything you want.”

“Can Idris Elba do this?” Kara asks, eyes twinkling, and she flings herself out the window and shoots up into the sky, the air cracking in a loud _boom_ around her. 

**Author's Note:**

> unicyclehippo on tumblr as well. come say hi & send me prompts & stuff


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